Figueroa-Matías, Nolberto

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    Screening soil metagenomic libraries searching for degrading enzymes useful for the production of biofuels and value added chemicals
    (2012) Figueroa-Matías, Nolberto; Ortiz-Bermúdez, Patricia; College of Engineering; Ríos Velázquez, Carlos; Latorre Esteves, Magda; Department of Chemical Engineering; Quiñones Padovani, Carlos
    Value-added chemicals and fuels produced via the biotransformation of lignocellulosic biomass resources like crop biomass waste are necessary to reduce our dependence on the non-renewable conversion of raw materials. Moreover, these alternative energy and chemical sources are crucial in order to achieve sustainability, and decrease the adverse impact of these activities on the environment. For instance, an alternative, renewable source of energy is the bio-fuel ethanol. Even though sugar ethanol production has been demonstrated to work in countries like Brazil, achieving a cost-effective, commercial-scale cellulosic bio-fuel industry requires new technologies to lower the price of bio-transforming these materials into bio-fuels. In addition, efforts to develop these technologies should focus on raw materials that are not committed to other primary needs, such as food crops. Therefore, there is a high interest in the use of low-value materials, such as waste crop biomass, switch grass, wood chips and other sources of lignocellulose and hemicelluloses to convert them into useful products such as biofuels. Challenges with the utilization on certain raw materials, like coffee crop waste, reside on the presence of toxic compounds like caffeine that represent a limiting step in the extraction of their energy potential confined in their lignocellulose. Biotechnological research is key in accelerating the discovery of new genes with the “information” that enables microorganisms to produce yet unknown catalytically active enzymes that can modify these raw materials when using them as carbon source and transforming them into high-value products. Out of the total microbial diversity that exists in different ecosystems in our planet, only 1% of those microorganisms are able to grow under known laboratory techniques. This means that 99% of those microorganisms with possible new genes encoding for different abilities remain undiscovered. This is where the importance of metagenomics relies. After screening a group of Metagenomic Libraries constructed from samples of Rainy and Dry Forest soil of Puerto Rico and from Hyper-saline Microbial Mats from Puerto Rico searching for genes that encodes for activities that enable a host to degrade lignin, cellulose, tween and caffeine as carbon source; we found a list of interesting genes. Some of them are related to aminoacid biosynthesis and degradation while others have more specific activities. These genes can be used for the production of biofuels or value added chemicals. We found a putative glycosidase with possible activity over saponins and possible lipase activity, we found genes related to the diaminopimelate pathway that possibly are involved in aminoacid metabolism, a LysR Hdfr gene that possibly relates to aminoacid metabolism, flagellum development and pigment production, and a putative Ketol acid reductoisomerase with possible activity over 2-acetolactate, related to aminoacid metabolism. These results prove that the metagenomic approach is useful to isolate 3 genes from different environments and from cultivable and uncultivable microorganism. Finally, the data support the use of metagenomics to find activities that can be applied to processes for the generation and production of value added chemicals and biofuels.