Production of acrylamide utilizing enzymatic hydration of acrylonitrile offers a number of economic and environmental advantages, and serves as a first example of a "green" process for production of an extensively-utilized commodity chemical. The enzyme-based process offers significant cost and environmental advantages over the traditional chemical process, but is hindered by temperature-dependent inactivation of the nitrile hydratase catalyst by the acrylonitrile substrate. The hypothesis to be tested in this project is that molecular characterization of the nitrile hydratase inactivation by acrylonitrile with a new thermophile isolate BR444 and subsequent enzyme alteration using site-directed mutation will provide a more acrylonitrile-resistant enzyme. The project is expected to provide basic information regarding enzyme resistance to alkylation in addition to possible improved catalysts for acrylamide bioproduction. This award is made by NSF as part of the joint NSF/EPA Program on Technologies for a Sustainable Environment.
