The challenge: breaking down mannans, indigestible components found in plant-based feedstuffs. Mannans are polysaccharides commonly found in feed ingredients like soy, palm kernel, copra or guar gum.
Mannans are deleterious to animal performance, severly compromising weight gain and feed conversion. Adding mannanases to animal diets can improve both the weight gain and the feed conversion efficiency. But wild-type mannanases found in nature are not usable for the pelleting required in animal feed production. Nor do they withstand the acidity found in the animal gut.
Direvo's achievement: Direvo used its bioengineering toolbox
to improve a wild-type mannanase enzyme so that it works ideally in the
animal and can also be used in industrial pelleting plants. To be
useful for pelleting, the enzyme had to both be pepsin-stable at a pH
of 2.45 and it had to be robust up to 90ºC or higher. Direvo
achieved both of these objectives. There is no known comparable enzyme
on the market.
Enzyme engineering brings several of Direvo's core competencies into
play, including high-throughput screening and assay development.
Several other projects are underway at Direvo that capitalize on these
capabilities.
