The preparation of bioimprinted whole-cell biocatalyst and its application in bioconversion of biodiesel

Abstract

Biodiesel has attracted considerable attention as an environmentally friendly alternative fuel. Lipase is the most popular enzyme for biodiesel production and immobilization has been deployed to improve enzyme stability and reusability. Exploitation of high activity lipase is the key point for biodiesel production. Whole-cell biocatalysts have been applied in the biosynthesis of biodiesel and bioimprinting is a promising approach for enzyme performances improvement. In this study, based on the S. cerevisiae cell-surface display system with α-agglutinin as anchor, a whole-cell biocatalyst of codon-optimized Rhizopus oryzae lipase was constructed and bioimprinted with oleic acid, gaining 5-fold increase on enzymatic activity in the alcoholysis of soybean oil to biodiesel. Moreover, the conversion of FAME was up to 95.45±2.73% after a 27-h reaction at 60°C. Our results indicated that combining bioimprinting with yeast display technique to prepare whole-cell biocatalyst could result in potential enzymes for bioconversion of biodiesel in organic solvents.