Enzyme competencies

Enzymes function as catalysts for the thousands of chemical reactions that take place in such cells. As natural substances, enzymes are ideal ingredients for use in the modern food and feed industry.

Danisco has produced enzymes for more than 40 years. Our product range includes:

• xylanases
• amylases
• beta-glucanases
• oxidative enzymes
• lipases
• proteases
• phytase

Expertise

The development and production of enzymes require extensive expertise as illustrated in the figure.

Enzyme application
The requirement for a new enzyme product is typically based on input from customers or internal application groups.

Enzyme functionality
Enzyme functionality studies are designed in order to more accurately define the requirement for an application. One approach is model systems, which simulate the chemical reactions that take place in the food or animal feed product.

Enzyme discovery
Nature presents a huge variety of different enzymes. A screen is an intelligent selection process for identifying enzyme candidates in nature. The screen is often a biochemical assay designed in such a way that it allows evaluation of a large number of enzyme candidates.

These enzymes mainly stem from microbial sources but also from plants or animal origin. The expertise required for discovery is:

• development and optimisation of screening systems
• access to unique environmental samples and strain collections
• cloning and characterisation of genes for new enzymes
• expression cloning of new enzymes

Enzyme and gene optimisation
Discovering an interesting enzyme involves the optimisation of the actual gene. This sometimes includes making a modified DNA structure to produce an even better enzyme. Some of the techniques include:

• gene cloning and characterisation
• gene expression systems in lab and production scale
• gene optimisation by site-directed mutagenesis and directed evolution
• state-of-the-art, high-throughput screening systems to identify improved enzymes

Fermentation and production
Enzymes are produced by fermentation in microorganisms. After the discovery and optimisation of the gene, it is important to develop a process that presents a good production economy. This requires the following tasks:

• classical strain improvement
• development of fermentation processes, including bacteria, yeasts and filamentous fungi
• transfer of developed process systems to production site
• downstream processing to purify and formulate the enzyme
• enzyme QC, i.e. assay of final product

Skills

The development of enzymes within Danisco takes place at our sites in Kantvik, Finland, and Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark. The employees have very different educational backgrounds, mainly within chemistry, engineering and biology.

Science

The development of enzymes takes place in collaboration with both external and internal partners. The external partners are for example universities and companies with competencies within biotechnology. The internal partners would mainly be the Danisco application groups, where the enzymes are tested at a smaller scale in for example bakery, ice cream and cheese. The collaboration also goes the opposite way in cases where the application groups have specific needs, which can be solved by developing new enzyme products.