Enzyme Engineering & Biocatalysis

Enzymes have revolutionized bioprocesses and aided industrial production, and thus are highly sought-after commodities in both academia and pharmaceutical industry. Being biodegradable in nature, they fulfil the central tenets of sustainable development and green chemistry. Our research at SynCTI involves employing high-end technologies to explore and characterize native enzymes, improve their activities, and create novel functionalities. Some of the established platforms that we use for enzyme engineering include directed evolution coupled with ultra-high-throughput microfluidic screening, structural characterization by X-ray crystallography and cryoEM structure-guided rational design.  As part of our central theme of “Design, Build, Test, Learn”, we incorporate in silico screening and AI/machine learning on the sequence-structure-function relationship of enzymes. The novel engineered enzymes generated are further evaluated for their potential as biocatalysts for various metabolic pathways to improvise final product output.