earticle

영어

Many carbohydrate hydrolyzing enzymes are employed in the conversion of recalcitrant biomass to fermentable sugar for bioenergy production. These enzymes often contain a carbohydrate binding module (CBM) which is essential for overall catalytic activity by binding to substrates or increasing the accessibility of protein to substrates. The CAZY (Carbohydrate Active enZYmes) database has classified all CBMs into 52 families by sequential and structural similarity. Though several representative functions and structures of CBMs are described in the CAZY database, it is still challenging to predict binding partners (e.g. substrate specificity) and molecular functions solely from the CAZY classification. Here, we introduce a structural bioinformatics approach to categorize CBMs in various prospects. The new categorization can make more precise prediction of functions and potential substrates of CBMs, which helps to design a new biomass deconstruction process for bioenergy production.