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Enzymes may be the right catalysts for efficient and clean processes, contributing to energy savings and negligible by-products and waste. Following the success of the Special Issue on “Biocatalysis, Enzyme and Process Engineering” in Processes (MDPI), the editors Pedro Fernandes and Carla C. C. R. de Carvalho wrote an editorial paper discussing the different papers published on this subject.

L-asparaginases have an acknowledge role in food and pharmaceutical industries. Accordingly, efforts to produce highly efficient, selective and stable L-asparaginases are currently underway. One of the strategies used to fulfill this goal involves the production of recombinant. In a recent paper published in Marine Biotechnology, Pedro Fernandes (iBB-BERG) and colleagues from the University of Hormozgan and Tarbiat Modares University in Iran report the production of a novel marine recombinant L‑asparaginase and provide its biochemical and structural characterization. The results obtained suggest the potential of the thermostable recombinant enzyme obtained for practical applications in food and pharmaceutical areas.

The mild operational conditions typically required by biobased production processes, together with the selective nature of biocatalysts, microbial diversity and tunability, and the century-long record of fermentation, clearly place bioprocesses as the primary contenders, by far, in achieving the generalized implementation of efficient, green manufacturing strategies. Moreover, by overlapping with the biorefinery approach, the foundations needed for bioprocesses to embrace the circular economy concept are set. In this Special Issue on “Bioprocess Engineering: Sustainable Manufacturing for a Green Society", guest edited by Pedro Fernandes and Carla de Carvalho (iBB-BERG) in Processes, the papers will discuss new bioproducts and concomitant bioengineering approaches to achieve a sustainable and environmentally friendly economy.

Enzymes are acknowledged as effective catalysts, namely, on account of their selectivity, high turnover, and ability to operate under mild conditions. Despite these advantageous features, the industrial application of enzymes still lags behind their use on a laboratory scale. This pattern may be partly assigned to the intrinsic nature of enzymes: these biocatalysts have been optimized throughout the ages to be mostly active in aqueous media and to operate in environments where substrate and product concentrations are much lower than those required for industrial processes to be commercially feasible. In this Special Issue on “Biocatalysis, Enzyme, and Process Engineering”, guest edited by Pedro Fernandes and Carla de Carvalho (iBB-BERG) in Processes, several papers discuss the latest applications of enzymes.

Optimization of biocatalytic processes is crucial to drive down the price of pharmaceutical and other high-value molecules. L-DOPA and dopamine are two molecules with pharmaceutical relevance, often used in the treatment of neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. In a paper published in the Journal of Biotechnology, Biotechnology PhD student Eduardo Brás and supervisors João Pedro Conde (INESC-MN/DBE) and Pedro Fernandes (IBB) used a microfluidic packed-bed reactor to optimize the enzymatic conversion of L-tyrosine to dopamine. The work culminated with the up-scale (780-fold) of the optimal conditions for L-DOPA synthesis, while maintaining the same output as obtained in the miniaturized system. This type of system can be used to expedite process development in the future.

Pathogenic infections in plant systems are on the rise, making their early detection in the field an important asset in order to avoid propagation amongst the rest of the crops. One biomarker of interest for this detection is Azelaic Acid (AzA). Based on this, a microfluidic device capable of detecting low concentrations of the acid was developed by Eduardo Brás under the supervision of Prof. João Pedro Conde (INESC-MN) and Prof. Pedro Fernandes (iBB), with the collaboration of Prof. Ana Margarida Fortes (FCUL). The results obtained using real samples as well as a description of the system, which exploits the inhibitory effect of AzA on the activity of the enzyme tyrosinase was published in the journal Analyst.

Photo details: Samir Budimčić - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia.

A video overview of the output of INMARE (‘Industrial Applications of Marine Enzymes’), a four-year European research project that set out to transform the enzyme biodiscovery process and to isolate new enzymes from the ocean, has been made available by the consortium. The goal of INMARE was to shorten & streamline the industrial enzyme pipeline by increasing the value of enzyme collections and to identify new lead products and prototypes during the projects lifetime. INMARE brought together several industrial and academic partners, including iBB-IST. The project received funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 634486.

Photo details; sea shore by Cascais, Copyright Carla de Carvalho, 2017. 

Six researchers from @IBB have been ranked among the World’s Top 2% of most widely cited scientists in the 2022 List of outstanding researchers prepared by Elsevier BV, and Stanford University (USA).   

Carla Carvalho, Joaquim Cabral, Isabel Sá Correia,  Mário Berberan e Santos, Miguel Prazeres and Pedro Fonte were recognized for the impact throughout their careers, while Pedro Fernandes was recognized as one of the World’s Top 2%  influent scientist in his field.

The updated list is based on the Sep 01-2022 SCOPUS database, updated to the end of the citation year 2021 and analyses 22 scientific areas and 176 disciplines.

Overall, 93 researchers from Técnico were highlighted in the study.  Congratulations to all!

Greener, cost-effective methodologies for food processing and production have been actively looked after because of increased demand due to growing population. Enzymes, as green and highly efficient catalysts, have been a mainstay of food technology. However, the advantageous features of enzymes are negatively impacted by their long-term instability, harsh industrial operational conditions and challenges for enzyme recovery and reuse. Immobilized enzyme formulations have been developed to address these limitations. In a recently published book chapter, Filipe Carvalho and Pedro Fernandes (iBB-BERG) present the latest finding and trends on the design and application of immobilized enzyme for food production and processing. The chapter was published in the book Value Addition in Food Products and Processing using Enzyme Technology, published by Academic Press.

A team of researchers from iBB-BERG, including Carlos Rodrigues, Ricardo Pereira, Pedro Fernandes, Prof. Joaquim Sampaio Cabral and led by Carla de Carvalho, will contribute to the development of enzymes for a new generation of environmentally friendly consumer products in the EU project FuturEnzyme. The consortium of 16 leading academic and industrial partners, led by Dr. Manuel Ferrer from CSIC (Spain), will develop innovative solutions that will combine big biodata mining and bio-prospecting, disruptive machine learning and protein engineering, nano-biotechnology, fermentation and downstream-processing systems, and pre-industrial testing. Innovative solutions will be proposed to discover, design, optimize and formulate new enzymes to develop detergents, textiles and cosmetics that combine a high level of functionality with improved sustainability, thus responding to the demands from consumers and industries.

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the use of biocatalysts in flow reactors. This merging combines the high selectivity and mild operation conditions typical of biocatalysis with enhanced mass transfer and resource efficiency associated to flow chemistry. Additionally, it provides a sound environment to emulate Nature by mimicking metabolic pathways in living cells and to produce goods through the systematic organization of enzymes towards efficient cascade reactions. Moreover, by enabling the combination of enzymes from different hosts, this approach paves the way for novel pathways. In a recent paper published in the journal Processes, Pedro Fernandes and Carla de Carvalho (iBB-BERG) review the recent developments within the scope of flow chemistry involving multi-enzymatic cascade reactions. The paper was published in the Special Issue  "Biocatalysis, Enzyme and Process Engineering" edited by both authors.

The organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) accounts for approximately 30-40% of MSW in Europe. BERG-iBB researchers developed a process that uses this type of waste as a raw material or the production of the biodegradable biopolymer P(3HB). In a first step the complex carbohydrates in the waste are hydrolysed into simple monosaccharides. The hydrolysate is then used as a carbon source to feed and induce the bacterium Burkholderia sacchari to produce P(3HB). In order to overcome nutritional deficiencies and attain a significant polymer accumulation (58% g polymer/g CDW) the C/N ratio was adjusted and the hydrolysate was supplemented with minerals. This work demonstrates that an easily accessible waste can be transformed into valuable biodegradable bioplastics. The work was published in Bioresource Technology.

Photo details: municipal waste by OpenIDUser2, GFDL. 

Pedro Fernandes and Carla Carvalho from BERG-iBB are acting as guest editors of a special issue of the open-access journal "Processes" on “Biocatalysis, Enzyme, and Process Engineering”. The aim is to address novel advances in the development and application of enzymes in the production of goods of interest for large-scale production. Topics include but are not limited to the following: i) Enzyme engineering towards improved biocatalysts; ii) The development of novel process designs for biocatalysis; and iii) Multienzyme cascade reactions. Manuscripts can be submitted via the journal web page until November 30, 2019.