Resumen de Diseño racional y computacional de oxidoreductasas para aplicaciones industriales y tecnológicas
The massive industrial production exploited by our society since the XIX century has growth at expenses of the planet. Environmental damages are already visible, and they urge us to find new and sustainable production ways. Among all contributors, this thesis is focused on enzymes and its potential application in industry. Enzymes are biomolecules capable of performing and speeding up chemical reactions. Their versatility makes them a perfect choice for green chemistry proposals, allowing the substitution of damaging process involving hard chemical compounds or heavy energy usage. The work done focus on the better understanding of enzymatic properties and behavior to improve them for industrial application, by applying state-of-the-art modeling techniques. This knowledge has allowed the development of a new classification method for substrate promiscuity, the Effective Volume, and the design of enhanced enzyme variants. In the enzyme engineering line, this thesis presents a mutant laccase obtained through computer-aided rational design, with an improved activity over arylamines, tailored explicitly for polyaniline production. Moreover, we introduce, for the first time in our knowledge, the concept of PluriZymes, an enzyme with two fully functional active sites: an original one and a “de novo” artificially added one.
