Description of Research Group
At the Center for Applied Biotechnology we work on application of microalgae, industrial enzyme development, and vaccine development. The most relevant activity for BioCat is industrial enzyme development, which has focused on identifying novel proteases for enzymatic hydrolysis of marine by-products. The group has: mined (meta)genomic libraries for specific classes of proteases, using an in-house developed protease prediction pipeline; developed a vector suite for expression of protease candidates fused to various combinations of solubility and purification tags; used the vector suite to express candidates in E. coli and B. subtilis; screened candidates for activities on different substrates, including industry relevant substrates; identified new/novel proteases for expression and purification; characterized new/novel purified proteases for activity and stability
(temperature/pH); c1ystallized and determined the structure for one new protease (collaboration with UiT).
Technology, expertise and equipment
Bioinformatics; recombinant technologies for cloning and expression in E. coli and B. subtilis, including restriction-free cloning and Golden Gate assembly cloning and fosmid library production; protein production by batch cultivation and fermentation, protein purification (.A.KTA- Ni-NTA, size-exclusion, ion-exchange chromatography);, enzymatic hydrolysis of marine biomass, chromogenic- and fluorometric assay development.
