The paper “Engineering Xylose Isomerase for Industrial Applications,” published by Professor Kihyun Nam of the College of Liberal Arts, was selected as the cover article for the latest issue (September 2024) of the journal Catalysts, an international journal in the field of catalysis.

Xylose isomerase (also known as xylose isomerase, or glucose isomerase) is an aldose isomerase that converts D-glucose and D-xylose to D-fructose and D-xylulose, respectively. The enzyme is widely used in the energy and food industries in the production of bioethanol and high fructose corn syrup. Improving the efficiency of this enzyme is very important in terms of production cost in industrial applications, and various protein engineering studies using rational engineering and directed evolution techniques have been attempted to improve the efficiency of xylose isomerase in the desired reaction environment.

In the cover article, the molecular characterization and structural studies of xylose isomerases are introduced. It also provided a structural analysis of the functional properties of the engineered sites found through biochemical and computational experiments in the study of isomerases obtained through protein engineering. This thesis will provide important insights for future xylose isomerase engineering to enhance industrial applications.