Producing a True Lignin Depolymerase for Biobleaching Softwood Kraft Pulp.

摘要

This project constituted an intensive effort devoted to producing, from the white-rot fungus Tramets Cingulata, a lignin degrading enzyme (lignin depolymerase) that is directly able to biobleach or delignify softwood kraft pulp brownstock. To this end, the solutions in which T. cingulata was grown contained dissolved kraft lignin which fulfilled two functions; it behaved as a lignin deploymerase substrate and it also appeared to act as an inducer of enzyme expression. However, the lignin depolymerase isoenzymes (and other extracellular T. cingulata enzymes) interacted very strongly with both the kraft lignin components and the fungal hypae, so the isolating these proteins from the culture solutions proved to be unexpectedly difficult. Even after extensive experimentation with a variety of protein purification techniques, only one approach appeared to be capable of purifying lignin depolymerases to homogeneity. Unfortunately the procedure was extremely laborious; it involved the iso electric focusing of concentrated buffer-exchanged culture solutions followed by electro-elution of the desired protein bands from the appropriate polyacrylamide gel segments.