This month we are joined by Alex Brogan, Lecturer in Chemistry at King's College London, who will present on recent work from his lab on using ionic liquids to enhance biocatalysis. Specifically, he will highlight how his lab are developing new methodologies for enzymatic plastic degradation as well as advanced biofuel production.

Ionic liquids are highly versatile solvents with tuneable properties and favourable properties such as high thermal stability, negligible vapour pressure, and wide electrochemical windows when compared to conventional solvents. Here, I will show how we have incorporated ionic liquids into the development of enzyme-based biomaterials with significantly enhanced stabilities and activities for use in biocatalysis.

Surface modification of proteins, to yield solvent-free liquid proteins, has been demonstrated as a robust method for synthesizing protein-rich biofluids that are devoid of any solvent. This new class of biomaterial has been shown to be a promising new technology where enzymes have been stabilized in non-aqueous environments. Using a variety of spectroscopic and scattering techniques, these novel biomaterials have been shown to allow for extreme enzyme thermal stability, stability against aggregation, retained dynamics, and enhanced function. However, their utility is restricted by extremely high viscosities. Fortunately, this can be overcome using ionic liquids, as these surface modified proteins are soluble in both hydrophilic and hydrophobic ionic liquids. Once solubilized, biomolecule architecture is maintained in the non-aqueous environment with improved thermal stability as compared to aqueous solutions. Through surface modification of the enzyme glucosidase we were able to demonstrate that once solubilized in ionic liquids, the enzyme has significantly improved activity at 120 °C, and otherwise unseen activity towards water insoluble cellulose. Importantly, this demonstrated that it was possible to reduce the number of enzymes require for cellulose degradation from 3 to 1.

Jake Nicholson

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Brogan Group

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