AMYLOMICS

The aim of the AMYLOMICS project is to develop novel, robust enzymes for the starch and carbohydrate industries. The novel enzymes should enable the formation of new primary products, such as oligosaccharides of defined sizes, composition and degree of branching, new types of linkages, cyclic or more complex polysaccharides and an increased digestive resistance, as well as secondary sugar derivatives such as substituted starches, rare sugars or novel isomers. Fundamental to the success of the project will be the development of an efficient meta-genomic platform technology for enzyme screening based on massive parallel 454 sequencing and microarray sequence capture.

This platform will enable 'genome walking' of complex meta-genomic DNA and greatly facilitate the access to the largely unexplored wealth of genes in the environment. The starch industry is the most developed sector of the polysaccharide industry and European companies play a leading role in the world market. The industry is in a constant need for a range of robust enzymes that can be used for the synthesis, fractionation and/or modification of carbohydrates. It actively searches for sustainable and more economical alternatives to existing techniques, both for the production of novel higher value products and for the improvement of older processes. The meta-genomic mining platform developed in the project is expected to provide a large number of robust thermophilic starch and carbohydrate modifying enzymes and lead to new and improved bio-catalytic process technologies.

Lead users of the project's results will be companies like the project partners Roquette Freres, a world leader in starch processing, Roche Molecular Systems, a leading providers of new tools, technologies and services in the genomic industry, and SME companies like Prokazyme who through the improvement of sequence based meta-genomic bio-prospecting platform can expand their product range of speciality products.