Postdoc position in Enzyme Engineering and Biocatalysis
A post-doctoral position within the field of Enzyme Engineering and Biocatalysis is available at the Department of Engineering at Aarhus University (www.eng.au.dk), Denmark, starting from February 1, 2017 or as soon as possible thereafter.
The postdoc project is for 32 months.
Description of the project:
Synthesis and characterization of designer lipids
Microalgae represents a sustainable source of high value biochemicals. In collaboration with Kyoto University and Technical University of Denmark, this project aims to develop a set of process and production technologies to convert lipids from microalgae into high added value hydroxyl fatty acids (HFAs) via microbial hydratase mediated biotransformation. HFAs is in a high demand in industry.
The key tasks in this project will be: 1) By applying state of the art technologies in protein engineering to optimize hydratases for diverse fatty acid promiscuity and enhanced activity and stability; 2) Characterizing and optimizing the catalytic activity and regio-specificity of engineered hydratases in converting fatty acids into hydroxyl fatty acids; and 3) Characterization of the hydroxyl fatty acids produced from lipids extracted from microalgae.