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Essay title: How can biochemistry/molecular biosciences help improve a single aspect of either bioenergy sources or bioenergy production?$9.27
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Essay title: How can biochemistry/molecular biosciences help improve a single aspect of either bioenergy sources or bioenergy production?
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Course
Biochemistry (4BICH001W.1)
Institution
University Of Westminster (UOW)
An essay that received 81/100 for applications of biochemistry assignment in semester 1 for the Biochemistry module in Biomedical Sciences at University of Westminster.
How can biochemistry/molecular biosciences help improve a single aspect of either
bioenergy sources or bioenergy production?
Bioenergy production is at the heart of sustainable energy, providing multiple ways of
meeting high energy demands as an alternative to using fossil fuels, all while reducing the
negative impact on the environment. However, many challenges face bioenergy production
as crops like sugarcane produce ethanol, leading to potential problems with food security
and competition between food and bioenergy production. In the broad field of biochemistry,
researchers are able to uncover advances in biochemical processes such as enzymatic
pathways to enhance ways of producing green energy and tackling competition over land
usage. Biochemists are able to modify enzymes’ function and specificity, allowing biomass
conversion to be more economical and efficient. This process of enzyme engineering allows
industries such as pharmaceuticals to have a faster manufacturing process and reduce
carbon emissions overall.
Cellulose hydrolysis, where cellulases break down cellulose into glucose, can play a major
role in the way biofuels are produced. Biofuels such as ethanol may be produced by
biochemically converting biomass into ethanol through cellulose hydrolysis (Robak and
Balcerek, 2018). Cellulose consists of a wide range of plant resources, like arable leftovers,
energy crops, and waste from logging, which can be used as renewable resources. There is
a cycle of regeneration as arable leftovers will plant seeds naturally, continuing to supply
sources for production. Furthermore, the method of producing bioenergy from agricultural
residues is comparatively carbon-neutral since the carbon released during burning is part of
the natural carbon cycle.
There are important enzymes that are needed in cellulose hydrolysis, and those enzyme
complexes are exoglucanases (cellobiohydrolases), endoglucanases, and β-glucosidases
(Zhang, Hong and Ye, 2009). Each of the following enzymes has a specific function: to
create fragments from cellulose and produce shorter chains. There are β-1,4-glycosidic
linkages that hold long chains of glucose molecules together to form cellulose, a
polysaccharide (McDonald and Donaldson, 2011). These linkages in the cellulose chain are
broken by the enzyme endoglucanase, resulting in segments being used as substrates, with
exo-β-glucanases, known as cellobiohydrolases in fungal systems, separating cellobiose
from the shorter cellulose chain and β-glucosidases hydrolyzing cellobiose to provide
glucose (Macarrón et al., 1993). Protein engineering can be utilised by biochemists to
improve the effectiveness of these enzymes used in cellulose hydrolysis through
modification. Site-directed mutagenesis is an example of this, in which particular amino acids
in the enzyme structure can be modified to improve catalytic activity, binding of substrates,
or ability to resist inhibitors (Dubey et al., 2019). With this technique being used by
researchers, more biofuel will be produced, and biochemistry can help make bioenergy
production more efficient and faster.
Scientists are able to change the genetic composition of plants and microbes by maximising
features like biomass yield through genetic engineering. Certain genes can be implanted into
the plant to make it grow faster and produce more biomass and bioenergy. This approach
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