Enzymes power life. They break down food in our bodies, make bread rise, clean our clothes, and enhance everything from animal feed to cosmetics. With their vast applications and sustainable profile, the global demand for new and better-performing enzymes is skyrocketing.
Nature holds the key — especially marine environments, where extreme conditions like high pressure, temperature, and salinity have shaped unique enzymes with extraordinary potential. But finding and optimizing these enzymes for industrial use is a slow, complex, and inefficient process. Most discovered enzymes never make it past screening. That’s where Enzymares comes in.
Revolutionizing Enzyme Discovery
Our enzyme prediction toolbox accelerates enzyme discovery and reduces the need for trial and error. We streamline the entire process by focusing on three key areas:
Smart Data Collection – Unlocking enzyme-rich biological resources from nature, in particular the marine environment.
Advanced AI Algorithms – Predicting enzyme function and performance with precision.
Enzymes Tailored to Industrial Applications – Testing AI-identified enzymes in real conditions and optimizing production based on performance.
Enzymares for All
Enzymares makes enzyme discovery more accessible across a broad range of sectors, including food, feed, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, aquaculture, chemicals and biorefineries, where enzymes can serve as biocatalysts in production processes or as active components in final products.
No matter your role — whether you're developing, producing or using enzymes — Enzymares is here to support your needs. Whether you're seeking a completely new enzyme, looking to improve an existing one, our tools and expertise are available to help.
If you're a researcher, industry expert, bio-engineer, bio-informatician or business leader curious about enzyme potential... let's connect, explore opportunities and innovate together!
Enzymares consortium
Project partners
The Enzymares project is made possible with the support of
Toolbox
The Enzymares Toolbox is an open-source platform developed through a collaborative initiative. Designed to accelerate enzyme discovery and engineering, this toolbox integrates computational modelling with curated biological data to empower researchers in academia and industry.
The Enzymares toolbox is hosted by KU Leuven. Do you want to use the toolbox? Click on the button below to get started.
Do you want to learn more about the development process and potential uses of the toolbox? Check out the interactive visual below.
Use cases
Xylanases
Enzymes have been used in the food industry for decades, for both process and product optimisation as well as for increasing the nutritional value of products. Xylanases play a major role in this, by (1) valorising biomass into high-quality products that have both functional and health-promoting properties, and (2) addition in cereal-based processes to achieve specific quality traits.
There is a continuous search for novel xylanases with specific traits: improved degradation of specific types of biomass (e.g. wood bark versus grain bran), producing specific biochemical structures and being able to work in specific (extreme) conditions (e.g. high temperature, high salt).
The Enzymares toolbox can be an aid by searching more specifically for xylanases that meet the desired characteristics, which can minimize the need for time-consuming experimental screening. In addition, newly discovered xylanases can be tested against the toolbox to gain initial insight into their functional possibilities.
Learn more about the Xylanase case that was used to test and validate the toolbox by clicking on the button below.
Hosting the BCCM-DCG diatom collections – provision of curated and well-characterized diatom strains for (applied) research, cryopreservation and safe deposit of important strains
Genetic and genomic characterization of microalgal (especially diatom) strains
Experimental facilities and technical support for ecophysiological and omics experiments
