Renewable Energy

The central future challenges for mankind lie in the area of energy and resource management. A major opportunity lies in the use of rapidly renewable raw materials such as wood, which can serve as a substitute for fossil oil. Wood is the best candidate to be used for special chemical syntheses and the production of biofuels. We focus our research on the degradation and modification of lignin, a previously unusable component of wood. Enzymes such as peroxidases and laccases produced by fungi and slime molds are the natural but slow way to break down the complex and inert structure of lignin into smaller compounds. So far, we have not been able to exploit these mechanisms enzymatically in an efficient manner. We want to use peroxidase/laccase mixtures from efficient lignin-degrading fungi/slime molds and apply them under non-ambient conditions and make them more efficient by enzyme engineering.