09-Dec-2020 | Market Research Store
The University of Liverpool researchers have recently developed a means for the future development of sustainable, clean bioenergy. For the production of hydrogen, the researchers are reprogramming bacterial protein cages into nanoscale bioreactors. In the journal Nature Communications, the researchers have mentioned how carboxysome, a unique bacterial organelle that captures important CO2-fixing enzyme, Rubisco, into a virus-like protein shell. The structure, catalytic property, and semi-permeability of carboxysomes have encouraged the engineers to create new nanomaterials with the ability to integrate various enzymes in the shell for improving the catalytic performance.
In the current research, the specific elements were installed in E. coli to develop empty carboxysome shells and they further added encapsulation peptide which is tiny linker that directs external proteins into the shell. The extreme oxygen sensitive character of hydrogenases has inspired the researchers to assimilatecatalytically active hydrogenasesinto the empty shell. The newly designed bioreactor is oxygen-sensitive enzymes thereby making it an ideal bio-factory for hydrogen production. Through research the scientists were able to biochemically separate nanobioreactors and also test bacterial cells’ hydrogen production. The researchers confirmed that the nanobioreactor helped improve oxygen tolerance and also enhance the hydrogen-production efficiency.
The current focus is to understand the way to stabilize the encapsulation system for better yields. There are chances in the future range of synthetic factories with incorporation of various enzymes and molecules for improved functions will be developed. Furthermore, the climatic changes occurring due to the increasing emission of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels have forced engineers to develop new inventions like carboxysome shell-based nanoreactors to incorporateparticular enzymes. It is thus believed that the opportunities of having more and more sustainable, clean bioenergy are high.
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