Moving into Nanotechnology Roles to Mimic and Boost Enzyme Activity

A new tendency toward the design of artificial enzymes based on nanostructures (nanodots, nanofibers, mesoporous materials) has emerged. On one hand, nanotechnology bestows self-catalytic nanoparticles with a specific activity to achieve efficient reactions with low number of by-products. On other hand, the nanoparticles may behave as nanometric scaffolds for hosting enzymes, promoting their catalytic activity and stability. In this case, enzyme immobilization requires the preservation of the catalytic activity by preventing enzyme unfolding and avoiding its aggregation. These approaches render many other advantages like hosting/storing enzymes in nanotechnological solid, liquid, and gel-like media. This chapter focuses on the most up-to-date approaches to manipulate or mimic enzyme activity based on nanotechnology, and offers examples of their applications in the most promising fields. It also gives new insight into the creation of reusable nanotechnological tools for enzyme storage.

Role of Enzymes From Microbes in the Treatment of Recalcitrant From Industries

The limited availability of fresh water is a global crisis. The growing consumption of fresh water due to anthropogenic activities has taken its toll on available water resources. Unfortunately, water bodies are still used as sinks for waste water from domestic and industrial sources. Azo dyes account for the majority of all dye stuffs, produced because they are extensively used in the textile, paper, food, leather, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical industries. Bacterial degradation of azo dyes under certain environmental conditions has gained momentum as a method of treatment, as these are inexpensive, eco-friendly, and can be applied to wide range of such complex dyes. The enzymatic approach has attracted much interest with regard to degradation of azo dyes from wastewater. The oxido-reductive enzymes are responsible for generating highly reactive free radicals that undergo complex series of spontaneous cleavage reactions, due to the susceptibility of enzymes to inactivation in the presence of the other chemicals. The oxidoreductive enzymes, such as lignin peroxidase, laccases, tyrosinase, azoreductase, riboflavin reductive, polyphenol oxidase, and aminopyrine n-demethylase, have been mainly utilized in the bacterial degradation of azo dye. Along with the reductive enzymes, some investigators have demonstrated the involvement in some other enzymes, such as Lignin peroxides and other enzymes. This chapter reviews the importance of enzymes in dye degradation.

Enzyme Replacement Therapy

Enzyme replacement therapy is a therapeutic approach in which the specific enzyme that is absent or inactive in affected individuals is replaced with a functional enzyme molecule derived from biological sources or produced by biotechnology. A large number and variety of enzyme defects have been identified in humans. Over 40 hereditary deficiency diseases were reported. The common feature is that enzyme deficiency leads to the accumulation of undegraded molecules and lysosomal storage, resulting in organ dysfunction. Crude enzyme preparations are often unsuitable for therapeutic uses because of their potential contamination and antigenicity. Advances in gene identification and cloning led to the subsequent production and demonstration of equal efficacy of recombinant human enzyme. The adverse events recorded range from boxed warnings for severe allergic reactions. This chapter summarizes therapeutic enzymes used in clinical practice, with particular reference to those obtained from biological sources and biotechnology processes.

Enzyme Use and Production in Industrial Biotechnology

This chapter demonstrates the bioprocess strategies involved in the application and production of enzymes from an industrial view point. Moreover, bottlenecks in enzyme production and novel strategies to overcome the barriers are demonstrated here. Enzymes are produced from different sources of microorganisms and mostly all biological reactions happen due to the help of enzymes within a very short time. The different uses of enzymes are discussed in this chapter.

Enzymatic Research Having Pharmaceutical Significance

The enzymes' biocatalysts act by lowering the activation energy without getting consumed in the reaction. The immense number of enzymes acts as a correctly matched orchestra to ensure that enormously complex life mechanisms and processes occur in a right direction. Sufficient quantity and accurate function of enzymes results in proper functional maintenance of body. The enzymes play a major role in the diagnosis, curing, biochemical investigation, and monitoring of many dreaded diseases of the century. The development of recombinant DNA technology had a significant impression on production levels of enzymes. Around 50% of the enzyme market is covered by recombinant enzymes. Because of development in molecular biology tools, several pharmaceutically enzymes have been identified and are being actively used in the pharmaceutical industry either for diagnostic or treatment. Information on this topic is very insufficient, and thus, the present chapter is an attempt to compile information on the sources, properties and applications of important therapeutic enzymes.

The Use of Liposomes in Enzymes and Drug Design

Liposomes are phospholipid vesicles that share many of membranes properties. Liposomes can be easily prepared in a range of sizes. They are able to improve the unfavorable properties of many free drugs such as increasing the amount of drugs delivered to various diseased sites in addition to decreasing the drug toxicities. Encapsulation of enzymes and food ingredients, as well as antioxidants in liposomes also received a lot of awareness. Moreover, an increase for drugs delivered to various diseased tissues was achieved by encapsulating drugs in the liposomes. The topics of encapsulation of enzymes and food ingredients as well as antioxidants in liposomes were highly investigated.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus Reverse Transcriptase (HIV-RT)

Reverse transcriptase (RT) is a multifunctional enzyme in the life cycle of human immunodeficiency virus and represents a primary target for drug discovery against HIV-1 infection. Two classes of RT inhibitors, the nucleoside and the non-nucleoside RT inhibitors, are prominently used in the highly active antiretroviral therapy in combination with other anti-HIV drugs. This chapter deals with the salient features of HIV-RT that make it an attractive target for rational drug design and chemotherapeutic intervention in the management of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Further, the role of RT in the viral life cycle, the ways the drugs act to inhibit the normal functions of RT, and the mechanisms that the virus adapts to evade the available drugs have been discussed. Computational strategies used in rational drug design accompanied by a better understanding of RT, its mechanism of inhibition and drug resistance, discussed in this chapter, shall provide a better platform to develop effective RT inhibitors.

Therapeutic Enzymes Used for the Treatment of Cardiovascular Diseases and Coagulation Disorders

The successful introduction of enzyme replacement therapy opened the way for the use of enzymes, first as crude preparations and later as highly purified enzymes for use in cardiovascular diseases, clotting disorders, etc. Elimination of blood clot is the key factor in thrombolytic therapy and fibrinolytic enzyme therapy can be practiced to remove the clot. Based on the mechanism of action, they are of two types of enzymes: plasminogen activators and plasmin-like enzymes. Plasma products are usually employed as a source of several enzymes used for the treatment of coagulation disorders. While these products have traditionally been purified from blood donations and obtained as foreign proteins obtained from heterogeneous sources, most are now produced by biotechnology. The therapeutic enzymes reviewed in this chapter are used for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases and hereditary diseases leading to coagulation disorders. Enzyme preparations obtained by direct fractionation from a naturally producing source and recombinant enzymes are considered in this chapter.

Industrial Enzyme Technology

Biotechnology, being the application of biological organisms and their components in pharmaceutical and other industrial processes, has emerged as the basic transformation tool for starch hydrolysis enzyme. Several advantages over chemical catalysts under mild environmental conditions with efficiency and high specificity have been accrued to this fact. Such include ingredient substitution through continuous fermentation, increased products yield and plant capacity, processing aid substitution, more efficient processing, less undesirable products with improved products. This chapter reports on the molecular properties of thermostable enzymes such as alpha-amylases, alpha-glucosidases, glucoamylases pullulanases as relates to pharmaceutical industries; highlights various technology development, continuous solid-state fermentation, metabolic engineering, sol-gel immobilized enzyme arrays often use in enzyme industries. The new modern biotechnology leads to improvement in the effects of various physiological conditions which may allow various industrial processes to carry out lower energy consumption, harmless to the environment, high efficiency, and the product's properties enhancement.

Biotechnology of Microbial Xylanase

Xylanases are inducible enzymes responsible for the complete hydrolysis of xylan into xylose. Both solid state fermentation (SsF) and submerged fermentation (SmF) are used in the production of xylanase. SsF has become a popular approach due to its economic value. In fact, higher biomass and lower protein breakdown are among the factors involved in determining the production of xylanases in SsF. Agricultural extracts which are abundantly available in the environment such as rice bran and wheat bran are commonly used as the potential carbon source in xylanases production. Xylanase is indeed one of the valuable enzymes which show immense potential in vast industrial applications. The demand for xylanase is increasing because of its prodigious utilization in pulp and paper, bakery, food and beverage, detergents, textile, and animal feed. Xylanase has therefore become one of the important commercial enzymes in recent years.