A research team from the School of Life Sciences at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) has developed a novel method for extracting enzymes from bacteria, which lowers the production cost yet improves the enzyme’s stability.
It also opens up a new avenue for the enzymatic production of biodiesel, an eco-friendly and effective substitute for fossil fuels.
The research findings were recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Biodiesel is an emerging renewable fuel commonly used in blends with petroleum diesel, which produces less pollutants than traditional pure diesel.
It is typically produced from vegetable oil or animal fats and methanol in the presence of a base catalyst.
Professor Michael Chan and his team members, Dr. Bradley Heater, Dr. Zaofeng Yang, and Dr. Marianne Lee from the School of Life Sciences have recently developed a novel method to overcome these hurdles.
Their approach involves trapping enzymes in protein crystals produced naturally in bacteria, and then isolating these crystals in a single step.
According to Heater, the lead author of the paper, “The real elegance of this technology is that the bacteria cells do all the hard work of producing the catalyst – all we have to do is separate the crystals from the cell debris.
Currently, we can use this method to produce an enzyme that converts waste cooking oil to biodiesel, but we should be able to trap other enzymes to perform different chemistry as well”, he added.