Advances in Recovery of Novel Biocatalysts from Metagenomes

Abstract

Metagenomics has accelerated the process of discovery of novel biocatalysts by enabling scientists to tap directly into the entire diversity of enzymes held within natural microbial populations. Their characterization has revealed a great deal of valuable information about enzymatic activity in terms of factors which influence their stability and activity under a wide range of conditions. Many of the biocatalysts have particular properties making them suitable for biotechnological applications. A diverse array of strategies has been developed to optimize each step of the process of generating and screening metagenomic libraries for novel biocatalysts. This review covers the diversity of metagenome-derived enzymes characterized to date, and the strategies currently being developed to optimize discovery of novel metagenomic biocatalysts.

A New Versatile Microarray-based Method for High Throughput Screening of Carbohydrate-active Enzymes

“…mine for specific activities (42). Identification of the specificities of novel P. militaris microbiome proteins illustrates the potential of the method for enzyme discovery (Fig.…”

A Short Review on Various Screening Methods to Isolate Potential Lipase Producers: Lipases-the Present and Future Enzymes of Biotech Industry

“…Liu et al (2010) and Syren et al (2010) employed rational design method for screening of lipases. Meta genomics approach, a molecular genomics approach was employed for the screening of non cultivated microbes (Steele et al, 2009;Lammle et al, 2007;Rondon et al, 2000;Henne et al, 2000;Yun and Ryu, 2005). This approach is now being widely employed to search novel industrial enzymes because of the availability of genetic material of most of the organisms (Lorenz and Eck, 2005;Kakirde et al, 2010;Kennedy et al, 2008;Jiang et al, 2010).…”

Metagenomic Analyses: Past and Future Trends

“…Metagenomics bypasses the need for isolation or cultivation of microorganisms. Metagenomic approaches based on direct isolation of nucleic acids from environmental samples have proven to be powerful tools for comparing and for exploring the ecology (11) and metabolic profiling of complex environmental microbial communities (20,125), as well as for identifying novel biomolecules by use of libraries constructed from isolated nucleic acids (18,27,42,108,116). In 1985, Pace et al (84) were the first to propose the direct cloning of environmental DNA.…”