ABSTRACT
Carbohydrates, in the form of oligo-and polysaccharides, are universally found in nature. These compounds are elaborated from simple sugars by gly-cosyltransferases (GTs) and are degraded by glycoside hydrolases (GHs) and polysaccharide lyases (PLs). In this work, these biosynthesis and degradative enzymes are referred to as “carbohydrate-active enzymes.” Large amounts of polysaccharide-based compounds are biosynthesized each year on Earth (for cellulose alone this amounts to over 109 t/year), mostly from photosynthesis. Because of this abundance, carbohydrate-based materials have long found applications as raw materials. Today, they are used in various industries, such as food, feed, paper, detergent, and textile, where there is a large scope for application of degradative enzymes to improve the properties of carbohydrate-based materials or to achieve their degradation into simple and fermentable sugars. In other words, carbohydrate-active enzymes are key enzymes for the clean processing of abundant and useful renewable resources.
