An improved β-fructofuranosidase for industrial sucrose-to-fructooligosaccharide biotransformation

What is it about?

Fructooligosaccharides are produced from sucrose using an Aspergillus japonicus β-fructofuranosidase. Efficient sucrose biotransformation is however not realized due to the enzyme's limitations under industrial conditions. In this paper we used a semi-rational protein engineering approach, using combined crystal structure and evolutionary-guided data, to engineer loops regions of the enzyme to yield a variant displaying improved specific activity and thermostability able to reduce the time to completion of an industrial-like FOS synthesis reaction by 26%.

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Why is it important?

The positive outcome of the semi-rational approach showed that engineering loops regions in an enzyme is a feasible strategy to improve both specific activity and thermostability, most probably due to the modification of enzyme structural flexibility.