Spectroscopic and structural investigations on target fungal Lytic Polysaccharide MonoOxygenases

• Grant number: 19/08263-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: June 28, 2019
• End date: June 27, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Microbiology - Applied Microbiology
• Principal Investigator: André Ricardo de Lima Damasio
• Grantee: César Rafael Fanchini Terrasan
• Supervisor: Paul Howard Walton
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biologia (IB). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of York, England
• Associated to the scholarship: 16/16306-0 - Functional and biological analyses of LPMO (Lytic Polysaccharide Monooxigenases) and accessory proteins (non-CAZymes) for degradation of sugarcane straw by filamentous fungi, BP.PD

Abstract

The understanding of enzymatic polysaccharide degradation has advanced in the past few years due to the identification of the lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases (LPMOs), which enhanced enzymatic conversion of lignocelluloses in fermentable sugars. In the fungal kingdom, saprotrophic fungi display a high number of genes encoding AA9LPMOs, but the differences of these enzymes are not fully understood. By using a proteomics approach, a series of fungal LPMOs from different fungal origins were previously selected for homologous and heterologous expression in Aspergillus nidulans. We present this project a part of the requirements to request a research internship abroad with professor Paul H. Walton from the University of York. Our aim is to deeply compare structural and spectroscopic characteristics from distinct fungal LPMOs, focusing on the histidine brace motif from the active site and its role in the enzyme-substrate interactions, allowing the advance of the studies with LPMOs.