- RESEARCH
Carbohydrate BiotechnologyHealthier ingredients - Improved properties - Product analysisSugars have gained somewhat of a bad reputation in recent years, because of their contribution to the growing obesitas pandemic. However, many carbohydrates and derivatives are essential for human health and can find application in a wide range of industrial sectors. The type of products that we are working on include prebiotics (functional oligosaccharides), low-caloric sweeteners (stevia), pharmaceuticals (L-sugars), nutraceuticals (resveratrol glycosides) and anti-oxidants (glycosylated flavonoids). We create new enzymes and pathways, and perform a throrough analysis of the products.
Biocatalytic SynthesisEnzyme technology - Green chemistry - Industrial applicationsIn various industries, enzymes are increasingly used as efficient biocatalysts to perform a wide range of chemical reactions. Indeed, biocatalysis can offer significant performance benefits compared to conventional chemistry, including higher reaction rates, stricter (enantio)selectivity and improved product purity. Furthermore, enzymes are active under mild conditions and are fully biodegradable, making them ideal tools in the field of green chemistry. We often collaborate with partners who wish to introduce an enzymatic step (lipases, ketoreductases, nitrilases) in their synthetic pathway.
Enzyme EngineeringRational design - Computational analysis - Directed evolutionNatural enzymes are not always perfectly suited for industrial applications, as they might not be stable under process conditions or display low activity on alternative substrates. Fortunately, these properties can be efficiently optimized through enzyme engineering. To identify hotspots for mutagenesis, both the structure (homology modelling, ligand docking) and the sequence (motifs, conservation, correlation) of a protein are first explored in silico. Libraries of enzyme variants are then created in vitro and screened for activity with a robotic platform. In that way, we can succeed in optimizing an enzyme’s specificity and/or stability in about one year time.
- TEAM
Prof. dr. Tom DesmetGroup Leader (PI)Tom Desmet holds a Phd in Biotechnology (UGent, 2005) and was appointed Associate Professor for Enzyme and Carbohydrate Technology in 2011. He has supervised 35 doctoral students, and teaches enzyme-related courses at the universities of both Ghent and Antwerp. He has (co)authored more than 130 peer-reviewed papers and was the overall coordinator of the collaborative projects 'SuSy' (EC/FP7) and 'GlycoProFit' (FWO/SBO). He was invited speaker at leading conferences in the field of biocatalysis (Biocat & Biotrans) as well as carbohydrates (CBM & EuroCarb), and has organized the 4th Novel Enzymes Conference (2014) and the 15th Carbohydrate Bioeengineering Meeting (2024) in Ghent.
Click here for a full CV.
Elke Debackere
Coordination
Dr. Koen Beerens
Epimerases and SDR enzymes
Dr. Jorick Franceus
Enzyme evolution and design
Dr. Shari Dhaene
Industrial liason
Dr. Emma De Beul
Glycoside phosphorylases
Marc De Doncker
Oligo- and polysaccharides
Carlos Alvarez
Carbohydrate epimerases
Alex Windels
Computational protein design
Ulrike Vogel
SDR enzymes
Jolien Lormans
Evolution of phosphorylases
Manon Steynen
Sugar analogues
Arthur Leyder
Polysaccharide synthesis
Yentl Allaert
Osmolytes
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Centre for Synthetic Biology
Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent UniversityCoupure Links 653, BE-9000 Ghent, Belgium
