Protein Engineering – An Option for Enzymatic Biofuel Cell Design

Abstract

This review summarizes and discusses from a protein engineering point of view strategies to improve performances of biocatalysts in enzymatic biofuel cells. Emphasis will be given on biocatalysts employed in biofuel cells and protein engineering principles for achieving an efficient electrical communication between electrode and biocatalyst(s). Biocatalyst engineering by Rational Design and Directed Evolution offers opportunities to redesign and to improve biocatalysts for biofuel cell applications instead of accepting insufficient biocatalyst properties as unalterable limitations in the development of biofuel cells.

Enzymatic Electrosynthesis: An Overview on the Progress in Enzyme- Electrodes for the Production of Electricity, Fuels and Chemicals

“…GOx is a well characterized and stable enzyme which catalyzes the oxidation of glucose to glucanolactone [242]. Several studies were performed to increase the electron transfer in GOx, especially based on using carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and gold nanoparticles [30,36,99,109,156,225,228,[243][244][245][246][247], by using mediators such as ferrocene derivatives [59,248,249], by coordination complexes of osmium with polymers [243,[250][251][252][253][254][255][256][257], by protein modification and engineering to achieve improved GOx properties [258][259][260] etc. Likewise, the other enzymes such as GDH, alcohol dehydrogenases were also studied from different sources and with various enhancing strategies in e-BES [14].…”

Power Harvesting from Human Serum in Buckypaper-Based Enzymatic Biofuel Cell

“…The functionalization of the electrode surfaces with assembled monolayers of redox enzymes, electrocatalysts, and bioelectrozymes (i.e., genetically engineered biocatalysts) (Güven et al, 2010;Yu et al, 2011) can lead to very effective electrical contact (Willner et al, 1998). However, most of these systems would involve the use of diffusional mediators which are dissolved in their respective compartments, and this poses an additional problem for the devices that are intended to be used as power sources for implantable medical devices.…”

Protein Engineering Methods and Applications

“…Other new applications (Lofblom et al, 2010), (Elleuche & Poggeler, 2010), (Klug, 2010), (Guven et al, 2010), (Nagahara et al, 2009), (Henriques & Craik, 2010) An important application area of protein engineering regarding food industry is the wheat gluten proteins. Their heterologous expression and protein engineering has been studied using a variety of expression systems, such as E.coli, yeasts or cultured insect cells.…”

“…Thus, protein engineering methods have been used to improve the performance of lignocellulose-degrading enzymes, and biofuels-synthesizing enzymes (Wen et al, 2009). Protein engineering is also applied to obtain an efficient electrical communication between biocatalyst(s) and the electrode by rational design and directed evolution, within the frame of biocatalyst engineering (Guven et al, 2010).…”