Journal Home Online First Current Issue Archive For Authors Journal Information 中文版

Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering >> 2011, Volume 5, Issue 4 doi: 10.1007/s11783-011-0326-2

Advances in the study of directed evolution for cellulases

1. State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China; 2. College of Life Science and Technology, Harbin Normal University, Harbin 150080, China

Available online: 2011-12-05

Next Previous

Abstract

If cellulose can be effectively hydrolyzed into glucose by cellulase, the production costs of hydrogen, ethanol or other chemicals from cellulosic materials will be greatly decreased, and economically viable production of biohydrogen and bioethanol will become feasible. Cellulose is degraded into glucoses by multi-component enzyme systems. Nowadays cellulases are widely used in brewing, food, bioenergy, fodder, textiles, paper, pharmaceuticals, environmental protection and other industries. However, existing cellulases have several problems that limit their wider applications, including the low turnover number for solid cellulosic materials, and low stability in adapting to various application conditions. For example, high temperature, low pH, and so on. Application of directed evolution technology may be one of the most effective ways for improving the characteristics of cellulases. This paper presents a brief review of the cellulose hydrolysis mechanism by cellulase, advances in cellulases (endoglucanase and -glucosidase) improvement by directed evolution for several characteristics (for instance, thermal stability, pH adaptability and enzyme activity), limitations of directed evolution for cellulases, and the outlook for directed evolution for cellulase.

Related Research