AsianScientist (Sep. 25, 2018) – An international team of researchers has found a fast, inexpensive and sustainable way to produce amino acids from plant-based waste. They published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Amino acids are essential to life. They are the building blocks for protein biosynthesis and have wide-ranging industrial applications, including being used in food for humans, in animal feed, and as precursors for biodegradable plastics, cosmetics and pharmaceutical products. The synthetic production of amino acids involves microbial cultivation processes such as fermentation, which are costly, time consuming and require extensive separation processes.
The development of efficient chemical methods to convert abundant and renewable starting material into amino acids has also been largely unsuccessful to date. Furthermore, existing methods to produce amino acids typically require the use of highly toxic chemical compounds (cyanides) as nitrogen sources and non-renewable organic compounds (aldehydes).
In this study, researchers led by Assistant Professor Yan Ning at the National University of Singapore (NUS) developed a sustainable chemical approach to produce a series of amino acids from woody biomass derivatives. The work is a collaboration with Professor Wang Ye’s research group at Xiamen University, along with scientists from Kyoto University in Japan, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US and the Institut des Sciences et Ingénierie Chimiques in Switzerland.
The researchers broke down glucose derived from the plant-based biomass to lactic acid using a base in a reactor vessel that was maintained at room temperature. The lactic acid produced was then converted into an amino acid at 493 Kelvin (~220 degrees Celsius) with the help of a synthetic catalyst created by Yan’s team. About 40 percent of the extracted glucose can be converted into amino acids in a few hours. The resultant amino acid-rich solution is then purified using membrane distillation.
While only one amino acid can be produced each time, the system can produce at least six types of amino acids, including leucine, alanine, aspartic acid and phenylalanine. Leucine, for instance, is an essential amino acid for protein synthesis and various metabolic functions in the body. However, it cannot be naturally produced by the human body and must be obtained from some protein-rich food and dietary sources. Leucine supplements can stimulate muscle growth and help prevent the deterioration of muscles with age.
“Our chemical approach is potentially superior to microbial cultivation processes. The robust system is capable of producing amino acids that are of high quality, comparable with those produced by conventional microbial cultivation processes,” explained Yan.
“Importantly, our system has further potential to completely convert all the glucose in the reactor and achieve an amino acid yield as high as 100 percent. This is not possible for microbial cultivation processes because a substantial amount of glucose is consumed for growth of the microorganisms or bacteria,” he added.
The article can be found at: Deng et al. (2018) Catalytic Amino Acid Production from Biomass-derived Intermediates.
———
Source: National University of Singapore; Photo: Pixabay.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.
