Prof. Marco Moracci studies the structure and function of archaeal carbohydrate active enzymes to increase our knowledge on their reaction mechanism, substrate specificity, and molecular determinants of their stability. In particular, enzymes discovery is focused on glycoside hydrolases (GH), a class of enzymes present in all living organisms, which catalyze reactions fundamental for the metabolism, molecular recognition, and cell grow. GH from extremophilic Archaea have also interesting applications in the field of sustainable biorefineries for circular economy. The discovery and characterization of novel enzymes from Archaea allowed him to seed the creation of new GH families in Carbohydrate-Active enzyme database (www.cazy.org), to define the substrate specificity of known families and to engineer the reaction mechanisms of GH into glycosynthases that synthesize oligosaccharides in quantitative yields. By mean of the powerful tool of metagenomics, he could discover new GH from Archaea previously unknown and still not cultivated. With this approach he currently studies the whole GH produced by the archaea populating solfataric environments (CAZome) showing how microbial communities cooperate/compete in vivo.

International visibility, activities, prizes, scholarships etc. 

Prof. Moracci has been recipient of national and international competitive projects. He is currently responsible for his University of an ESFRI European delocalized Research Infrastructure Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Synthetic Biology Accelerator (www.ibisba.eu), which aim to offer first in class services of biocatalysis and biotransformations to academia and SME. He is responsible for creating and maintaining content of assigned pages in Cazypedia.org, he is coordinator of the PhD in Biotechnology, has an appointment in the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), is member of the Board of trustees of the Italian Society of Biochemistry (SIB). He is vice- President of the International Society for Extremophiles, editor of the journals Microbiology Letter and Extremophiles, is member of of the Scientific committee of the Carbohydrate Bioengineering Meeting and co-organizer of the International Conference of Extremophiles (Extremophiles 2024).