Valorization of Biomasses from Energy Crops for the Discovery of Novel Thermophilic Glycoside Hydrolases through Metagenomic Analysis

The increasing interest for environmentally friendly technologies is driving the transition from fossil-based economy to bioeconomy. A key enabler for circular bioeconomy is to valorize renewable biomasses as feedstock to extract high value-added chemicals. Within this transition the discovery and the use of robust biocatalysts to replace toxic chemical catalysts play a significant role as technology drivers. To meet both the demands, we performed microbial enrichments on two energy crops, used as low-cost feed for extremophilic consortia. A culture-dependent approach coupled to metagenomic analysis led to the discovery of more than 300 glycoside hydrolases and to characterize a new alpha-glucosidase from an unknown hyperthermophilic archaeon. Aglu1 demonstrated to be the most active archaeal GH31 on 4Np-alpha-Glc and it showed unexpected specificity vs. kojibiose, revealing to be a promising candidate for biotechnological applications such as the liquefaction/saccharification of starch.