Oxidation reactions play a key role in the bulk chemical industry and enzyme-mediated biocatalysis offers an alternative to the use of traditional catalysts, which can suffer from poor chemical selectivity and require the use of harsh reaction conditions and produce hazardous waste products.
Our society has an increasing demand for the fuels, plastics, and other essential chemicals that support our modern way of life. This growing energy requirement is in direct competition with the need to better protect our environment to mitigate the ongoing climate change we are experiencing.
The project is firmly embedded at the interface of chemistry, biology and physics, a key driver for BBSRC in the ‘Exploiting new ways of working’ agenda.
This cross-disciplinary project fuses chemical synthesis and mechanism, structural biology, computational (bio)chemistry and cutting-edge biotechnology in a highly innovative approach to the development of new biocatalytic processes of interest to industry and addresses the BBSRC’s strategic research priority, Bioenergy and Industrial Biotechnology.
The use of CO2 as a chemical feedstock is attractive for various reasons, not least as a means to address the desirable reduction of global CO2 levels.
One of this project ‘s strengths is the novel computational technology it introduces to the paramount field of biocatalysis. Any quantum mechanical insight into enzymes is initially holistic in character, that is, energies and electron densities are calculated for the whole systems.
The project is firmly embedded at the interface of chemistry, biology and biophysics, a key driver for the BBSRC in the ‘Exploiting new ways of working’ agenda.
This project will combine three areas with distinct skillsets, namely cell biology, industrial biotechnology and synthetic chemistry, adding interdisciplinary training to core skills in the latter two areas.
