Institute of Chemistry
Topic
Novel enzymes for bioconversion of plant biomass
PhD. program
Biotechnologies
Year of admission
2024
Name of the supervisor
Ing. Katarína Šuchová, PhD.
Contact:
Receiving school
Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology, Slovak University of Technology
Annotation
Development of bio-based economy requires economically viable processes for the production of fuels, chemicals and materials from renewable resources. The largest available renewable source of carbon is lignocellulosic biomass which is composed of a highly complex network of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Hemicelluloses are heteropolysaccharides that coat the cellulose fibrils and include a variety of glycans from which the most abundant are xylans and mannans. One of the steps of biomass utilization is enzymatic hydrolysis of plant polysaccharides to monosaccharides which are further converted into desired products. A wide range of microbial enzymes is used for hydrolysis, such as xylanases, mannanases, xylosidases, arabinofurnosidases and others. Although research in this field is ongoing for several decades and many enzymes have already been described, novel enzymes with interesting properties are still being discovered. The topic of this dissertation will be to find and characterize novel microbial enzymes capable of degrading the components of lignocellulose.