New patent from Mitsui

A Google alert has led me to a new US patent from Mitsui Chemicals Inc.

The abstract is very abstract: "A nitrile hydratase variant comprising substitution of at least one amino acid with another amino acid to improve two or more properties of nitrile hydratase by substitution of one or more and three or less amino acids".

The objective of the work under the patent is to produce a NHase variant with improved stability and high initial reaction rate.

It appears to be about Pseudonocardia thermophila variants, but I havent read all 77 pages of it since it tends to dwell on the very many changes to the sequence that they are protecting, both at the amino acid and nucleotide level.

Microbial production of acrylamide by nitrile hydratase

I have just obtained a copy of the "Acrylamide, Microbial Production by Nitrile Hydratase" by R-C Zheng, Y-G Zheng and Y-C Shen from the Encyclopedia of Industrial Biotechnology: Bioprocess, Bioseparation and Cell Technology, published in 2010; DOI: 10.1002/9780470054581.eib004. It is new, interesting resource for how much large scale use of NHases there is going on, and includes some information I havent seen anywhere else before.

• It gives a worldwide estimate for the biocatalytic production of acrylamide as 400,000 t/a
• There are "more than 10 plants" in China running microbial acrylamide production using a Nocardia strain to yield a total production capacity which "has exceeded 200,000 t/a", with plans to increase this to 300,000 t/a
• Degussa have a plant in Russia with a production capacity of 24,000 t/a using a R. rhodocrous M8 strain.
• Mitsui Chemical have a JV acrylamide plant in Pusan, Korea.
• SNF Floerger built a 20,000 t/a plant using the Nitto technology in 1999 (but it doesnt say where), and have plans for a further 5 of the same size.