#33 · Tools & infrastructure

Curated enzyme databases with HMM pipelines expand halogenase and PET-degrader discovery

The common thread is pairing a curated reference set with sequence-based screening of metagenomic data to recover enzyme families of interest. A halogenase database of more than 120 enzymes supports a pHMM and catalytic-residue pipeline for annotating halogenating enzymes in genomic and metagenomic sources. PlasticEnz combines HMM and DIAMOND homology search with ProtBERT-based classifiers to flag plastic-degrading enzymes in meta-omics data, with reported F1 above 0.7. A separate HMM screen of marine metagenomes identifies more than 680 PETase-like genes enriched in polar waters, with 5 of 9 tested candidates degrading PET. What is new is the layering of discovery and classification tooling onto restricted, curated enzyme resources, with experimental validation reported only in the polar study.