PICT-ICEO Platform
Engineering and Screening for Original Enzymes
PICT-ICEO "Engineering and Screening for Original Enzymes" is dedicated to the isolation and characterization of new enzymatic activities from natural biodiversity screening (microbial collections or metagenomic libraries) and from libraries of variants obtained by rational and/or combinatorial protein engineering.
The mission of the platform is to discover new catalysts and/or to adapt/optimise them to industrial constraints for the development of new processes, and to provide the methodologies and expertise necessary for the biochemical and biophysical characterisation of these new enzymes.
The PICT-ICEO platform is composed of three technical facilities:
- a high-throughput enzymatic screening platform dedicated to diversity creation, development of screening methods, library screening and hit selection;
- an analytical platform dedicated to the characterisation of the reaction products of studied catalysts;
- a platform dedicated to the purification and biophysical characterisation of studied proteins.
PICT-ICEO works in close association with the "Molecular Catalysis and Enzyme Engineering" (CIMEs) research team.
Expertises
- Characterisation of reaction products of enzymes
- Biochemical : the biochemical and biophysical characterisation
Our scientific objectives are therefore to:
- participate in increasing the understanding of i) the links between gene diversity and enzyme functionality and ii) the functioning of genomes and metagenomes;
- develop an integrated approach for the total analysis of enzymes, exploiting sequence, structure, dynamics and activity;
- contribute to the enrichment of 3D structure databases through the identification of new architectural motifs and original catalytic configurations, resulting from structural metagenomics projects;
- to accelerate the construction of catalysts for synthetic biology and the construction of new metabolic pathways.
To do this, we rely on a state-of-the-art range of equipment:
automated colony picking machines allowing the organization of mutant libraries in microplate format,
integrated liquid handling stations, dedicated to the phenotypic screening of variant libraries in microplate format,
a microfluidic system to create single/double emulsion for ultra-high-throughput screening in micrometric size droplets,
FPLC systems to purify recombinant enzymes,
a set of biophysical equipment (fluorometer, circular dichroism, nanoDSF) to determine preliminary biophysical parameters of enzyme of interest,
liquid and gas chromatography systems coupled to different types of detectors (UV, refractometry, charged aerosol detector, mass spectrometer) for enzyme product analysis.
Service offer
PICT-ICEO is open to the local, national and international academic and industrial scientific community.
Depending on the demand and complexity of the project, these services can be provided in three different ways
- provision of equipment,
- the provision of services
- cooperation contract
Certification
The PICT-ICEO platform is ISO 9001:2016 and NFX 50-900 certified.
PICT-ICEO platform is a member of the networks
Since 2012, PICT-ICEO is part of the Toulouse Integrated Screening Platform (PICT), an IBiSA labelled facility. It also belongs to the GenoToul network, which brings together all the life sciences technology platforms of the Toulouse region.
PICT-ICEO is a partner of the European/French infrastructure IBiSBA "Industrial Biotechnology Innovation and Synthetic Biology Accelerator".
- Start-up PILI
- ADISSEO
- IPBS
- Lesaffre
- L’Oréal
- Saint-Gobain
- MetaFluidics, Advanced toolbox for rapid and cost-effective functional metagenomic screening –microbiology meets microfluidics. H2020, GA N° 685474.
- Droopy, New analytical tool for screening polymer synthesis and degradation by droplet evaporation and coffee ring effect. Appel à projet pré-compétitif TWB
- DECO, Evolution des enzymes d’un PUL xylanolytique pour la conception de cocktails enzymatiques innovants. ANR, 18-CE43-0005.
- CultissimDrop, Droplet-microfluidics for Culturomics. Appel à projet pré-compétitif TWB
- BioImpulse, Chimie biosourcée pour la production de colles non
Biosourced chemistry for the production of non-toxic
adhesives. ADEME – PIA. - RadicalZ, Rapid discovery and development of enzymes for novel and greener consumer products. H2020-EU.3.2.4.2.