The present invention provides a method for preparing salidroside. The present invention uses β-glucoside and CoFe.sub.2O.sub.4 particles to form a cross-linked aggregate capable of effectively catalyzing the reaction of β-D-glucose and tyrosol, thereby increasing the yield of the salidroside. The steps of the preparation method of the present invention are simple and short, and the method is easy to operate and readily applicable to industrial production.

The present invention provides compositions and methods related to the production and use of enzymes suitable for reducing the amount of steryl glycosides or saturated monoacyl glycerols in a lipid mixture.

The present application provides novel polypeptides having xylanase activity and the respective nucleic acid sequences encoding those polypeptides as well as vectors comprising these nucleic acid sequences and host cells transformed by these vectors. In addition the present invention provides a method for producing these polypeptides and a composition comprising the inventive polypeptides.

The present invention relates to isolated polypeptides having beta-xylosidase activity and polynucleotides encoding the polypeptides. The invention also relates to nucleic acid constructs, vectors, and host cells comprising the polynucleotides as well as methods of producing and using the polypeptides.

The present invention relates to the production of steviol glycoside rebaudiosides D4, WB1 and WB2 and the production of rebaudioside M from Reb D4.

The present invention provides a multi-component enzyme system that hydrolyzes hemicellulose oligomers from hardwood which can be expressed, for example, in yeast such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In some embodiments, this invention provides for the engineering of a series of biocatalysts combining the expression and secretion of components of this enzymatic system with robust, rapid xylose utilization, and ethanol fermentation under industrially relevant process conditions for consolidated bioprocessing. In some embodiments, the invention utilizes co-cultures of strains that can achieve significantly improved performance due to the incorporation of additional enzymes in the fermentation system.

The present invention is directed to a yeast strain, or strains, secreting a full suite, or any subset of that full suite, of enzymes to hydrolyze corn starch, corn fiber, lignocellulose, (including enzymes that hydrolyze linkages in cellulose, hemicellulose, and between lignin and carbohydrates) and to utilize pentose sugars (xylose and arabinose). The invention is also directed to the set of proteins that are well expressed in yeast for each category of enzymatic activity. The resulting strain, or strains can be used to hydrolyze starch and cellulose simultaneously. The resulting strain, or strains can be also metabolically engineered to produce less glycerol and uptake acetate. The resulting strain, or strains can also be used to produce ethanol from granular starch without liquefaction. The resulting strain, or strains, can be further used to reduce the amount of external enzyme needed to hydrolyze a biomass feedstock during an Simultaneous Saccharification and Fermentation (SSF) process, or to increase the yield of ethanol during SSF at current saccharolytic enzyme loadings. In addition, multiple enzymes of the present invention can be co-expressed in cells of the invention to provide synergistic digestive action on biomass feedstock. In some aspects, host cells expressing different heterologous saccharolytic enzymes can also be co-cultured together and used to produce ethanol from biomass feedstock.

Detecting xanthan gum in a sampling location includes delivering a tagged polypeptide to the sampling location. The tagged polypeptide includes a polypeptide and a fluorescent probe bound to the polypeptide, such that the fluorescent probe is released from the polypeptide to yield an unbound fluorescent probe when the polypeptide interacts with xanthan gum. Light that excites the unbound fluorescent probe is directed toward the sampling location, and an intensity of fluorescence emitted from the unbound fluorescent probe is assessed, wherein a non-zero intensity is indicative of the presence of xanthan gum in the sampling location. A device for the detection of xanthan gum has a sensing region including the tagged polypeptide, a light source adapted to direct light to the sensing region, the light source adapted to provide one or more wavelengths of light to excite the fluorescent probe, and a detector for detecting fluorescence emitted from the fluorescent probe.

The present invention relates to GH61 polypeptide variants. The present invention also relates to polynucleotides encoding the variants; nucleic acid constructs, vectors, and host cells comprising the polynucleotides; and methods of using the variants.

A strategy for eliminating or greatly reducing the need for physical/chemical treatments or the use of whole microbes for lignocellulosic biomass and organopollutant degradation is disclosed. The soybean is a practical, cost-efficient and sustainable bioreactor for the production of lignin-degrading and cellulose-degrading enzymes. The use of soybean as a transgenic overexpression platform provides advantages that no other industrial scale enzyme expression system can match. Availability of a battery of related plant biomass degrading enzymes in separate transgenic soybean lines provides unprecedented flexibility in industrial and bioremediation processes. Depending upon the particular application, selected soybean-derived powdered enzyme formulations can be used, and their sequential addition can be orchestrated. Manufacturing enzymes using transgenic soybeans wherein these enzymes are capable of lignocellulose and organopollutant degradation into useful or nontoxic products will dramatically change biomass engineering schemes and environmental remediation practices. This technology has a sum of advantages that other protein expression system cannot duplicate, including the manufacturing of individual enzymes in a cost-effective manner that allows flexibility in cocktail composition, ease of application, and long term storage in the absence of a cold chain.