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Functional metagenomics and consolidated bioprocessing for valorization of pulp and paper mill sludge

University of British Columbia

Biocatalyst discovery is integral to bioeconomy development, enabling design of scalable bioprocesses that can compete with the resource-intensive petrochemical industry. Uncultivated microbial communities within natural and engineered ecosystems provide a near-infinite reservoir of genomic diversity and metabolic potential that can be harnessed for this purpose. To bridge the cultivation gap, functional metagenomic screens have been developed to recover active genes directly from environmental samples. In this thesis, a pipeline for recovery of biomass-deconstructing biocatalysts sourced from pulp and paper mill sludge (PPS) metagenome is described. This environment is targeted given its high composition of cellulose that is hypothesized to direct enrichment of enzymes capable of hydrolysing it. The resulting oligosaccharides represent platform molecules that can be fed to downstream applications using consolidated process design for converting biological waste streams into value-added products. High-molecular weight DNA was extracted from sludge and used to construct a fosmid library containing 15,000 clones using the copy control system in EPI300™-T1 R E.coli. Extracted DNA was also used in whole genome shotgun sequencing to compare the metabolic potential of the sludge community with fosmid screening outcomes as well as other waste biomass environments using MetaPathways v2.5 software pipeline, with specific emphasis on carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes). Metagenomic assembling, open reading frame (ORF) prediction, binning and taxonomic assignment approaches were also used to bring out correlations between function and taxonomy. In total, 32,232 ORF’s were mapped to the CAZy database predicted to encode glycoside hydrolases, glycosyl transferases, and carbohydrate binding module families. The fosmid library was screened for glycosidase hydrolase activities using a pool of sensitive fluorogenic glycosides of 6-chloro-4-methylumbelliferone (CMU). A total of 744 clones capable of converting pooled substrates were recovered indicating an extremely high hit rate (1 hit per 43 clones). Following fosmid sequencing and annotation, two of the most promising hits with defined single GH family loci were sub-cloned and overexpressed in E.coli BL21 DE3 strain to conduct basic biochemical characterization. Activity of purified enzymes was demonstrated on model lignocellulosic substrates to evaluate the potential of implementing the proposed circular bioprocess with waste PPS as both the feedstock and source of enriched biocatalysts.

Text

2018-04-16

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/65401

Chemical and Biological Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/