W-BioCat - Heavy metal enzymes for sustainable industrial biocatalysis
European Research Project
W-BioCat is a European research project focused on the development of tungsten containing enzymes for application in a sustainable chemical industry. The project is a collaboration between Delft University of Technology, University of Oxford, Weizmann Institute, University of Florence, HydRegen, and EvoEnzyme. Our goal is to advance the field of sustainable chemistry and contribute to a cleaner future.
Our Research Interests
Europe needs a sustainable chemical industry which will only be realized by new breakthrough technologies. Industrial biotechnology is established in chemical manufacturing, offering more efficient, more specific, safer and less energy demanding production, but is held back by the limited number of enzyme classes in industrial use. The new Pathfinder Open project W-BioCat funded by the European Innovation Council (EIC) targets an important enzyme class of tungsten-containing enzymes (W-enzymes) which catalyse amazing chemical reactions involving challenging low redox potential reduction reactions, are currently impossible to obtain economically and on scale to match industrial needs. The goal of the project is to functionally express W-enzymes in an industrial workhorse micro-organism, as this would be a major breakthrough for the science and application of this enzyme class