Professor Adrian Tsang, the director of structural and functional genomics research center of Concordia University visited TIB at the invitation of Professor Shulin Chen, the Director of Tianjin Key Laboratory for Industrial Biological Systems and Bioprocessing Engineering of TIB on October 28, 2013.
He gave a lecture entitled "Genome-wide approaches to identify and characterize lignocellulolytic enzymes from fungal extremophiles". In the lecture, Prof. Adrian Tsang introduced the new way to degrade lignocellulose in thermophilic fungi and cud chewer. Lignocellulosic material is both the most abundant source of biomass on the planet and an enormous storehouse of sugars. However, the sugars in cellulosic material are remarkably recalcitrant. The ability to detect new enzymes, to produce them in large quantities, and to understand how they work will lay the groundwork for the development of more efficient and economical processes for lignocellulosic biomass. In addition to using sequence comparison to identify orthologues of lignocellulolytic enzymes, his research group has analyzed the transcriptomes and exo-proteomes of the thermophilic fungi when cultured in a variety of agricultural straws to reveal the strategies used by different fungi in the decomposition of lignocellulose as well as identifying novel extracellular proteins that may play a role in biomass decomposition. Besides, the genes predicted to encode lignocellulolytic proteins have been cloned and transformed into Aspergillus niger for the production of recombinant enzymes.
Professor Adrian Tsang got his a bachelor of science in University of Alberta and a doctor degree of biology in York University. He continued to follow professional experience for his postdoctoral fellow in London. Adrian Tsang was assistant professor of biology in McGill University in 1984-1991 and in Concordia University in 1991-2002. He engaged in the protein production in filamentous fungi and functional genomics research. The current study is the identification of the effective fungal enzyme protein hydrolyzing lignocelluloses using genomics and proteomics methods. His studies about extreme environmental fungal extracellular protein functions and fungal expression system has made breakthrough progress.
