Mário Murakami: Roer the bone to break the cellulose

Mário Tyago Murakami uses a curious expression to talk about himself and those who work with him: bone-eater. He is the one who doesn't leave the task halfway, goes to the limit, and when knowledge is lacking, chases it. A recent graduate of public school to a private college in Bauru (SP), he completely gave up television to catch up with his classmates; he earned his doctorate (direct) in just three years in a laboratory where the supervisor fostered competition among students as a form of stimulation; he accepted a substitute position on the National Biosafety Technical Commission (CTNBio), "in the back of the room," just to learn how the area is regulated—he ended up as president of the commission. This is not to mention the sequence of papers in prestigious journals, including Nature, Science, Journal of Biological Chemistry, and Nature Communications. Education: Bachelor's degree in food engineering and doctorate in molecular biophysics from Unesp, with an internship at the Desy synchrotron in Hamburg (Germany); independent study from Unicamp (2013) At 45 years old, Murakami directs the National Laboratory of Bio-Renewables (LNBR), of the National Center for Energy and Materials Research (CNPEM), in Campinas (SP), where he arrived in 2008, trading the perspective of a stable post at the State University of Paulista (Unesp) for a CLT contract. There, his group looks for in Brazilian biodiversity, from the capybara's intestine to the limits of microorganism genomes, enzymes capable of breaking down cellulose and transforming agricultural waste into fuel. Some of these findings support a new technology that is approaching industrial application. Murakami is also the winner of the FCW Science Award of 2026, from the Conrado Wessel Foundation, worth R$ 500 thousand, whose theme this year was the energy transition. Throughout the award's journey, Murakami is the second youngest to win it in a scientific modality—it is most common to see scientists with more career time among the winners. "The award has indeed had this trend: recognizing the trajectory before the promise, unless the promise is already being fulfilled," says Carlos Vogt, director-president of the foundation. In addition to the laboratory and CTNBio, Murakami coordinates the FAPESP Program for Research on Energy Transition and says that one of his great achievements will be to create a scientific environment in which critical mass emerges in strategic areas for the theme. In the interview, he recounts his journey, explains why he changed the focus of his career from crystallography to bioeconomy, and draws the future of this strategic area for the country. How was your school journey? I always studied in public school until the second high school. I was one of the highlights of the Regional Mathematics Olympiad, organized by Unesp of Bauru, and I won a scholarship to study at the private school, the best in the city, highly competitive. I arrived with a very large gap. I came from a school where students played truco during class—a backwater. I thought: "If I don't study, I won't be anyone." I say I am not from high society, I don't have blue blood in my veins. The family is very humble; my father was a mechanic, no one in the family had a degree. Without the scholarship, I wouldn't have been able to study. That year I stopped everything. I didn't care about television, I didn't go out. It was a clock: school from 7:15 am to 12:30 pm, lunch, tutoring in the afternoon until 6 pm, at home I read a little of the Estadão, which my stepfather signed, and went to sleep. It was self-imposition. I was sure that the way to have a dignified life was through study. And how did you become fascinated by the scientific area? I always had a lot of aptitude for the exact sciences. But I was interested in biochemistry, so I was divided. I built my first computer, bought the parts. I was kind of Professor Pardal. When I applied for the entrance exam, I thought: what course can combine biology with exact sciences? Biotechnology did not exist in a broad sense as it does today. What was closest was chemical engineering, which had physics, chemistry, and mathematics, but not biology. Food engineering had the microbiological part. I passed both and opted for food engineering. In the first year, I went to look for an internship in the physics department. I worked with molecular biophysics, with macromolecular crystallography, which uses concepts from physics to see the structure of proteins atom by atom. Who were the decisive people in your education? I had a very interesting physics teacher. I got perfect scores on his class and asked for an internship. He was very sincere: "Mário, I think you have a lot of potential. If you stay with me, maybe I won't be able to offer all the necessary opportunities for your full development. I want to present you to a teacher who is at the frontier of knowledge in an emerging area and who can expand your possibilities for growth." I found this attitude very altruistic. Who doesn't want a good student knocking on their door? I was 18 years old and needed the scientific initiation scholarship to live. He introduced me to Raghuvir Arni, who would become my doctoral supervisor. Arni gave me four stacks of books, all in English, which I didn't speak well yet, and said: "When you come back from vacation, I will interview you. If you can answer, I'll take you for an internship." He was very tough, rigorous. But it worked out. I had a mattress in the laboratory and slept there many nights following experiments. Arni was very competitive. Whoever worked more survived. I was bone-eater. Many gave up, I continued. I did the doctorate directly in three years, with six months in Germany, at the Desy synchrotron [German Synchrotron of Electrons], in Hamburg. You were a professor at Unesp and traded the public university for a CLT position at CNPEM. Why? I stayed for a year as a collaborative professor at Unesp, in physics, and I realized that only doing crystallography was limiting me scientifically. I depended on the science of others to do my own. I tried to bring molecular biology there, but it was a biophysics department, it didn't have infrastructure, it didn't have enough support. Without molecular biology, my science always depended on someone coming to collaborate, to deliver a sample. I didn't want to be a crystallographer, an applicator of technique. I wanted to answer relevant biological questions. The technique, by itself, has limitations; you have to seek the tool that the question demands. I was 26 years old when a position opened here at CNPEM. It was still the ABTLuS [Brazilian Association of Synchrotron Light Technology, an organization that managed the National Synchrotron Light Laboratory and later became CNPEM], there wasn't the laboratory I direct today [LNBR]. The family said: "You are crazy, you will abandon the stability of the public university for a CLT position and get the same thing?" But I wasn't thinking about money. I was thinking about improving the quality of my science: here I would continue doing the crystallography I do well and learn molecular biology with colleagues, to gain scientific independence. But there was also a shift in research topics. I wanted scientific independence, and the line of toxins and coagulation was from my supervisor. I did not foresee a medium and long-term progression; the topic had already passed its peak. And since that time I understood that Brazil was very strong in bioenergy, a pioneer with the Proálcool program [National Ethanol Program, launched to encourage sugarcane ethanol as fuel]. Health is obviously very important, but I thought about competitiveness, leadership, the chance to make a difference and have real impact beyond what appears on the Lattes platform. For a crystallographer who wants to understand inhibition mechanisms to develop a drug, without pre-clinical testing, without hospitals and partners to conduct clinical phases, I would never be able to transfer my knowledge. I would promise for life to deliver a molecule, a drug, that I would never deliver. This generated frustration in me, because I am a realizer. Here I had a pilot plant, which was the closest thing an institution without profit to the industry could get. It had state-of-the-art sequencing technologies to explore microbial biodiversity and a sustainability team that bridged the gap between the laboratory and industry, with technical-economic and life cycle assessments. It was from this perspective that it became clear that a discovery made by studying microbial biodiversity, investigating evolutionary trajectories at the molecular level built over millions of years, could really generate impact for society. In 2025, Murakami's group described CelOCE in Nature, an enzyme that breaks down cellulose by oxidation, found in the genome of an unknown soil bacterium where a sugar cane bagasse plant in Quatá (SP) had been stored for more than 20 years. Small, with less than 120 amino acids, it has a compact active site and an unprecedented way to bind to cellulose. Inserted into a fungus used in the production of industrial enzymes, it increased the glucose released from the sugarcane bagasse by 21%. I learned a lot from Arni, from everyone I could interact with on my journey, but, in the scientific theme, I built myself. I did not inherit the topic from my doctoral supervisor nor from the postdoc. It is different from those who do a postdoc in a large group, they inherit a biological question and continue developing it. I chose a totally different line that took time to mature, but it ended up defining my identity as a scientist. I was always very productive, but the high impact was a slow construction, decades of learning, improvement, and much resilience. We managed to enter the peer review phase in Nature Communications and PNAS three times, without success in the first attempts. Many look at the present, but they do not know the history and the difficulties. I had to be self-taught in how to publish in high impact. Whoever is in a laboratory that already does this has a paved road, a network of contacts that opens ways. If someone says that they dream of publishing in Nature as corresponding author in Brazil, being from a hatchery, in research built from scratch, it is insanity. I never aspired to this. I aspired to feel that my science was evolving. The work in Nature (see box) was the peak: we discovered in biodiversity, elucidated the mechanism, integrated it into a national technological platform and demonstrated it on an industrially relevant scale. We changed the paradigm of a fundamental question, the metabolism of cellulose, the most abundant polymer on the planet, by microbial life, with direct impact on Brazilian industry. How is a group built to obtain these results? No one could do this alone. It was not a project of Mário, Priscila, Gabriela, Letícia, Mariana. It was a common project, everyone addressing the same problem from different perspectives. A bunch of young people, all in their thirties, all bone-eaters. And the part I am most proud of is that the people who joined this cause today have their own scientific identity. Priscila [Giuseppe], Letícia [Zanphorlin], Gabriela [Persinoti], Mariana [Morais] publish as corresponding authors at this same level, with their FAPESP projects, most without my name. Without demagoguery: I am more proud of this than the results. It would not make sense to achieve this by sucking people without letting them develop. In the American model, there is often a sacrifice of careers. I did not study leadership principles, but two words are very important: transparency and predictability. The high-level scientist needs a sense of belonging. The agreement is not expensive. If the person doesn't trust you, if you have a hidden agenda, it undermines everything. Today we are almost 200 people in the unit. Leadership meets every Monday and discusses the budget openly; one reads the work of another even without being an author. Hiring in one division and not in the other usually causes fights. Here it doesn't, because everyone participates in prioritization. You direct the LNBR, preside over CTNBio, and coordinate the FAPESP Program for Research on Energy Transition. How have these roles accumulated? Is there still time for research? I went to CTNBio because, to bring my science to society, I had to understand the regulation. Some of our research was very legal, but it had taken a path against the regulation, and the chance of becoming a product was very low. I managed to get a substitute spot. I asked: "put me in the back of the room, just to listen." As a good bone-eater, I studied. I became the holder, coordinator of the sector, vice-president and president, without needing to ask for a vote. The presidency was more a burden than a gift: the situation demanded it. And when there is a call, you don't turn your back. That is where the product for the industry in ten years is discussed: a naturally blue orchid, a double-muscle tilapia, a new resolution for human gene therapy. And without this regulation, our enzyme would not reach the industry. Now I am in a phase-out of CTNBio and a phase-in of FAPESP. As a researcher, I feel fulfilled. What I can do besides that is see the people who worked with me become the new leadership and help the ecosystem. At CNPEM I have reach; in FAPESP, I amplify this reach. Moving from 200 people to much more. But I do not abandon research. On Sunday I wake up at 6 am and work in a cafeteria until 9 am, before my daughter wakes up. She says dad lost his home address. Where do you want to go with this research in the coming years? Today Brazil is a country of ethanol biorefinery. The future is to transform this model into a hydrocarbon biorefinery, a sustainable aviation fuel, SAF. Because this is a global fuel; ethanol is not. It is green oil: identical to oil, only from renewable sources. Let that flourish in Brazil as a new Proálcool, a pro-green oil. It will not happen in 5, 10 years; it will happen in 15, 20. If it succeeds, it will be as big as Proálcool and will have a global impact on the energy transition, because it is detached from a regional molecule. This is one of my great career goals. But we don't want to live in a dream for 20 years from now. Our pilot plant needs to become a demonstration plant. When the industry asked for a batch of our product to test with a partner, I could not do that in Brazil; I would have to send it to Fraunhofer, in Germany, or to the United States. A campaign to generate a test batch costs R$ 6 to 7 million. Transforming the pilot plant into a demonstration plant costs R$ 30 million. Many Brazilian industrial biotechnology startups do not advance because they do not have a place to produce a batch to show the client. I believe that this action will already bring immediate impact to our bio-industry and technological sovereignty. The theme of the FCW Award this year was the energy transition. What is the importance of talking about this theme now, and what does the award recognize in your work? Humanity is going through great climatic catastrophes. The world is warming at an enormous speed, in a very aggressive way. That limit of 1.5 °C, we have already exceeded it in recent years. And the geopolitical issues, from Russia with Ukraine, from the United States with Iran, show our dependence on fossil fuels. For Brazil, a tropical country, 2 °C of warming is catastrophic. Those living in Finland will find it more pleasant; for those living in Teresina or Palmas, it is a matter of survival. Agriculture will change, soil moisture will be drastically lost. Brazil will feel it first: the disaster in Rio Grande do Sul is an example. At the same time, it is the only country that can produce more energy and more food by capturing carbon on a planetary scale. Brazil has approximately 100 million hectares of degraded land; if one-third of that recovers, it can produce what the whole world produces today in bioenergy, with negative emissions. As for me, I think the award recognizes a singularity we have achieved, a nirvana between high-impact research, innovation, and public value. Constantly, not in peaks every 5, 8 years. Sometimes great scientists are so close to innovation that they cannot drive it. Navigating with excellence in the regulatory world, in the applied world, and in fundamental science is not trivial: I see that these were the important factors for what we have achieved permanently. The jacu-cigana (Opisthocomus hoazin) lives in the Amazon floodplains and is the only bird that digests leaves by fermenting them in the papo, as the cattle do in the rumen (the first and largest chamber of the ruminant's stomach). And it is the last of its lineage, whose relatives, known from fossils of more than 20 million years in Brazil and Africa, have disappeared. "It is a unique bird," summarizes Mário Murakami, whose research group has dedicated itself to this issue. The bird carries a paradox. Small herbivores are usually slow, like the sloth, because the energy conversion from leaves is costly. Flying, in turn, is one of the most energetically expensive activities for an animal. "How can this strictly herbivorous small bird obtain enough energy to meet its metabolic demand?" questions Murakami. The hypothesis is that the papo acts as a bioreactor of very rare efficiency. What the team found inside has not yet been published. According to the scientist, none of the papo's microorganisms (mostly bacteria and some fungi) correspond to known species, and there are candidates for new genera and families. Another finding is curious (and a little disgusting). Ruminants first suckle and only then get the microbes that digest the grass from the environment. In the jacu-cigana, the calf's first meal is the food regurgitated by the parents, already fermented and smelling of cow manure. And calves, young and adults have the same microbial community. "We are changing a paradigm. Everything we know is based on mammals." The interest goes beyond zoological or ethological curiosities. Enzymes that break down the most intricate part of the leaves are what is sought in bioprocesses to transform bagasse and straw into fuel. "If it works well in the bird's bioreactor, it may help in the biorefinery." The group forecasts another year and a half of work, with FAPESP support, to isolate the fungi and understand how the system works.