CELLULOSE AS SOLE SUBSTRATE FOR BIO ETHANOL PRODUCTION: DEVELOPMENT OF STRUCTURAL MOLECULAR MODEL OF ENDOGLUCANASE III FROM TRICHODERMA REESEI USING BIOINFORMATIC TOOLS

One of our greatest challenges in improving nation’s economy is to reduce the dependence on imported petroleum products. To accomplish this, we need a variety of alternative fuels, which includes ethanol produced from cellulosic materials. Cellulose is a rich natural biopolymer on earth and most dominating agricultural waste. Apart from the fossil fuels, bioethanol is used as chief renewable energy source found on earth. Hence, we developed the structural molecular model of the endoglucanase III from Trichoderma reesei by homology modelling using Modeller 9v12. Based on sequence similarity with protein of known structure (PDB ID: 1H1N) was chosen from PDB by using protein BLAST. The models were evaluated by PROCHECK. Resulted Ramachandran plot analysis showed that conformations for 99% of amino acid residues are within the most favored regions. A possible active site was identified in the model using Sybyl6.7. The predicted model permits initial inferences about the unexplored 3D structure of the endoglucanase III and may promote in relational designing of molecules for structure-function studies.