Job Candidate Seminar: Dr. Bekir Eser, "Enzymes as promising catalysts for green and sustainable synthesis: The case of fatty acid modifying enzymes"

Global challenges such as climate change, environmental pollution and resource scarcity necessitate development of eco-friendly and sustainable catalytic routes to produce (bio)chemicals, fuels and materials, which are in line with circular bioeconomy, decarbonization and zero-pollution goals. Here, biological solutions, especially enzyme catalysis, present promising strategies for eco-friendly conversion of renewable resources such as non-food biomass, waste oils and CO₂ into useful compounds. In my research, we aim to discover, characterize, and engineer enzymes to generate a toolbox of biocatalysts for such useful biotransformations. In this talk, I will describe our studies on biotechnologically relevant enzymes that convert renewable fatty acids into two product types; 1) hydroxy fatty acids, which can be used as material precursors as well as bioactive molecules, and 2) hydrocarbons, which can be used as drop-in biofuels. Through rational and semi-rational protein engineering of enzyme active-sites, we have generated mutant libraries to discover variants with altered substrate specificity and enhanced chemo-/regio- selectivity. Our kinetic and mechanistic characterization of these enzyme variants led to improved understanding of the factors that control substrate specificity and product scope. We have also demonstrated the applicability of our enzymes through multi-enzyme cascades and semi-prep scale reactions. Our mutant variants belonging to different enzyme groups can be used for green and sustainable synthesis of a wide-variety of products from jet-fuel additives and material precursors to bioactive lipids. 

- Dr. Eser's abstract