Professor Banta co-convened a session entitled "Sustainable Biological Production of Inorganic Materials" at the SIMB annual meeting in Boston, MA. He presented an invited talk entitled "Engineering Cofactor Regeneration for Biocatalysis" within a different session, and member of the Banta Lab appeared on two posters at the meeting.
A new manuscript by Gokulu and Banta describes the use of DNA Springs to stretch open the active site of a thermostable alcohol dehydrogenase. The enzyme naturally prefers medium chain secondary alcohols and when the active site is stretched open, it can accommodate longer chain substrates. These results demonstrate how mechanical forces can be applied to alter enzymatic reaction trajectories. The new results were published in ACS Synthetic Biology.
A new manuscript by Jung, Jiang, Su, Inaba, Khoury, and Banta describes the engineering of the oxyanion metal binding protein ModA/WtpA in Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans to extend its ability to bind rhenium in addition to molybdenum, tungsten and chromium. Overexpression of the mutant protein in A. ferrrooxidans enables the cells to bind and recover these industrially important metals. These results demonstrate how protein engineering and synthetic biology can be used to create new solutions for critical material production. The new results were published in JACS Au and the article was featured as an ACS Editor's Choice.