WG1: Production of sugars as platforms molecules

Production of sugars as platform molecules is one of the most promising biotechnological routes for the valorization of organic wastes or lignocellulosic substrates. In this sense, during the last two decades, significant advances have been made in the development of more efficient and cheaper enzymatic catalysts. Notwithstanding, there are still opportunities to achieve significant progress that will lead to increased performance and productivity and, therefore, to the reduction of the costs of the production of sugars.

The organic residues are composed by different types of polysaccharides whose enzymatic hydrolysis releases a set of sugars including glucose, galacturonic acid, arabinose, galactose, rhamnose, xylose, mannose, etc., which can be transformed in bioproducts. When non-conventional yeasts, able to utilize a wide range of sugars, are available, the optimization of the release of all these kinds of sugars is of utmost importance.

The main objective of this WG is to maximize sugar production with the minimum requirements of enzyme loading for their further conversion into bioproducts. To reach the objective, newly isolated enzymes and recombinant enzymes will be tested. Furthermore, new enzymatic cocktails will be formulated and the addition of accessory enzymes will be assessed.

Specific Tasks of WG1 are:

• To prepare enzymatic hydrolysis tests of representative substrates (lignocellulose, food waste and agri-food residues) with different enzymatic activities (cellulases, β-glucanases, xylanases, pectinases, amylases, etc.)

• To evaluate the addition of accessory enzymes

• To evaluate the necessity of a pretreatment step to favor the enzymatic hydrolysis of different raw materials