Abstract
Background: Biocatalysis involves the application of microbial enzymes, whole cells (or extracts) or fermentation for precise bioconversion/biotransformation of organic compounds, resulting in different product compounds with specific functional groups. Hyphozyma roseoniger is a filamentous yeast used for its biocatalytic ability to convert sclareol, a plant terpenoid to ambradiol, an intermediate to ambrafuran, which is a well sought-after fragrance fixative in the perfume industry. Metabolomics is the global study of metabolites present within a living organism at a particular time, where the utilization of analytical platforms in parallel offers a holistic methodology for the analysis of metabolites with diverse physico-chemical properties. Hypothesis: H. roseoniger possesses metabolic capabilities for the biotransformation of sclareol to ambradiol and multi-platform untargeted, as well as semi-targeted metabolomics are suitable investigative tools to explore the biochemical steps involved in the biocatalytic conversion of sclareol to ambradiol by H. roseoniger. Aims and Objectives: This study entails integration of these approaches to better comprehend H. roseoniger as a biocatalytic microorganism from a biochemical perspective, using multi-platform-based metabolomics approaches such as GC–, LC–MS and NMR to investigate the bioconversion of sclareol to ambradiol...
Ph.D. (Biochemistry)