Team:HUST-China
ABSTRACT
410 million people on the earth choose banana as their staple food. 8800 million tons of banana stalk, which is directly discarded back to fields every year, contains abundant fiber and other resources for industry to increase income and to reduce banana disease. Chemical banana degumming technology remains the problems of high pollution and cost. HUST-China designed Banamax, an engineering Pichia pastoris that responds to environmental pH and adaptively regulates the amount of biodegrading enzymes. The construction of high-enzyme activity kits were completed by combining 3 pH-responsive promoters with 6 different signal peptides and 3 biological degumming enzymes. We successfully degraded pectin at pH 7 and degraded lignin at pH 5. Alkali was expressed at pH 2 to buffer the environmental pH and maintain the enzyme activity. Crude fiber has been successfully obtained from banana stalk sample in trial, which shows the feasibility of the entire biological intelligent manufacturing system.