Jose Munoz

Dr. Munoz-Munoz is a Lecturer in the Department of Applied Sciences at Northumbria University (UK) with more than 18 years' experience investigating bacterial enzymology and microbe-microbe interactions in gut microbiota environments and agricultural ecosystems.

He has a strong background in enzyme characterization of plant-glycan degrading bacteria; microbial systematic; structural biology; functional and comparative genomics ((meta)genome analysis and (meta)transcriptomics). His research interests and trajectory are focused on agroindustrial plant glycan metabolism by human gut microbiota, microbe-microbe interactions, discovery of new prebiotics, characterization of biotechnological enzymes and management of agro-industrial waste materials and employment of aerobic and anaerobic bacteria for the bioenergy conversion.

His international career has fostered the authorship of scientific publications on the enzymes degrading food waste polysaccharides and the protein engineering of those enzymes to enhance the activity/affinity through structure-guided directed evolution.

My role in the HBBE would be the characterization of key enzymes that represent the bottleneck of metabolic pathways to degrade recalcitrant polymers from waste streams, including polyethylene, PET or lignocellulose, and characterize the structural mechanism of those enzymes to maximize the yield of high value molecules, such as bioethanol or pigments as end products. In addition, he is interested to design new metabolic pathways through biocatalytic cascades for the generation, from waste materials, of high value products in the pharmaceutical industry. He has worked with multiple companies such as Quorn Foods, P&G or Sterling Biopharma.