New chemical probes reveal how plant-fiber-digesting enzymes work
Tedeschi M, Lit VAJ, McGregor NGS, Gote T, Kooloth Valappil P
Plant Signaling
The paper, wood, and food products you use every day rely on enzymes like these to break down tough plant fibers, and understanding them better could lead to more efficient, sustainable manufacturing.
Plant cell walls contain tough sugar chains called mannans that help give plants structure, similar to how cellulose does. Scientists designed special chemical tags that stick permanently to the enzymes that break down these mannan chains, letting them watch these enzymes in action inside bacteria and fungi that feed on plant material. Surprisingly, some of these tags also grabbed onto related enzymes that break down cellulose, hinting these enzymes might be more flexible than previously thought.
Key Findings
Researchers synthesized the first activity-based probes specifically designed to target mannanase enzymes, built from mannobiose, mannotriose, and glucomannose sugar structures
The probes successfully labelled mannanase activity in secretomes from saprophytic bacteria and fungi grown on mannan-containing plant biomass
Probes unexpectedly also labelled cellulases in Aspergillus niger and Cellvibrio japonicus secretomes, and the labelling mechanism was confirmed via X-ray crystallography (AnManA, CjMan26C) and mass spectrometry (AnManA, AnMan26A)
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists built new molecular tools that light up plant cell wall-digesting enzymes called mannanases, which are used in food and paper manufacturing, helping researchers see exactly how these enzymes work and identify them in complex biological mixtures.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
The development of activity-based mannanase probes.
β-Mannanases are endo-acting glycoside hydrolases (GHs) that cleave β-1,4 glycosidic linkages in mannan-rich plant cell wall polysaccharides. They find application in the food and paper industries....
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