Glycoengin (Engineered Glycozymes in biocatalysis, metabolic engineering and bio-orthogonal chemical biology)

The general objective of the project is the application of Carbohydrate Active Enzymes (CAZymes), namely glycosidases glycosyltransferases and polysaccharide deacetylases, to the production of specialty oligosaccharides and glycoconjugates by both biocatalysis and metabolic engineering approaches, grounded on the engineering of substrate specificity (rational and by directed evolution) to achieve the synthetic application goals.

This general objective is divided in two aims:
AIM 1: Structure/function and Engineering of CAZYmes
1.- Septanoside/engineered glycosidase pairs as bio-orthogonal tool in chemical biology
2.- Peptidoglycan and chitin deacetylases as antimicrobial targets. Structural determinants of substrate specificity and applications in biocatalysis
3.- Evolving glycosidases as transglycosidases for the enzymatic synthesis of Human Milk Oligosaccharides (HMOs)
AIM 2: Synthetic Biology and Metabolic Engineering with CAZymes
4.- Metabolic engineering of S. cerevisiae as cellular platform for the production of glycosphingolipids with applications as immunomodulators
5.- Metabolic engineering of microalgae chloroplast as cellular platform for the production of rhamnolipids as biosurfactants
6.- Optogenetic circuits for light control of gene expression in synthetic microalgae chloroplast