Improvements in current strategies for carrier-based immobilisation have been developed using hetero-functionalised supports that enhance the binding efficacy and stability through multipoint attachment. New commercial resins (Sepabeads) exhibit improved protein binding capacity. Novel methods of enzyme self-immobilisation have been developed (CLEC, CLEA, Spherezyme), as well as carrier materials (Dendrispheres), encapsulation (PEI Microspheres), and entrapment. Apart from retention, recovery and stabilisation, other advantages to enzyme immobilisation have emerged, such as enhanced enzyme activity, modification of substrate selectivity and enantioselectivity, and multi-enzyme reactions. These advances promise to enhance the roles of immobilisation enzymes in industry, while opening the door for novel applications.

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Phosphopeptide enrichment is an essential step in large-scale, quantitative phosphoproteomics by mass spectrometry. Several phosphopeptide affinity enrichment techniques exist, such as Immobilized Metal ion Affinity Chromatography (IMAC) and Metal Oxide Affinity Chromatography (MOAC). We compared Zirconium(IV) IMAC (Zr-IMAC) magnetic microparticles to more commonly used Titanium(IV) IMAC (Ti-IMAC) and TiO2 magnetic microparticles for phosphopeptide enrichment from simple and complex protein samples prior to phosphopeptide sequencing and characterization by mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). We optimized sample-loading conditions to increase phosphopeptide recovery for Zr-IMAC, Ti-IMAC and TiO2 based workflows by 22%, 24% and 35% respectively. The optimized protocol resulted in improved performance of Zr-IMAC over Ti-IMAC and TiO2 as well as HPLC-based Fe(III)-IMAC with up to 23% more identified phosphopeptides. The different enrichment chemistries showed a high degree of overlap but also differences in phosphopeptide selectivity and complementarity. We conclude that Zr-IMAC improves phosphoproteome coverage and recommend that this complementary and scalable affinity enrichment method is more widely used in biological and biomedical studies of cell signaling and the search for biomarkers. Data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD018273.

The use of enzymes for the synthesis of nucleoside analogues offers several advantages over multistep chemical methods, including chemo-, regio-and stereoselectivity as well as milder reaction conditions. Herein, the production, characterization and utilization of a purine nucleoside 2'-deoxyribosyltransferase (PDT) from Trypanosoma brucei are reported. TbPDT is a dimer which displays not only excellent activity and stability over a broad range of temperatures (50-70 8C), pH (4-7) and ionic strength (0-500 mM NaCl) but also an unusual high stability under alkaline conditions (pH 8-10). TbPDT is shown to be proficient in the biosynthesis of numerous therapeutic nucleosides, including didanosine, vidarabine, cladribine, fludarabine and nelarabine. The structure-guided replacement of Val11 with either Ala or Ser resulted in variants with 2.8-fold greater activity. TbPDT was also covalently immobilized on glutaraldehyde-activated magnetic microspheres. MTbPDT3 was selected as the best derivative (4200 IU/g, activity recovery of 22 %), and could be easily recaptured and recycled for > 25 reactions with negligible loss of activity. Finally, MTbPDT3 was successfully employed in the expedient synthesis of several nucleoside analogues. Taken together, our results support the notion that TbPDT has good potential as an industrial biocatalyst for the synthesis of a wide range of therapeutic nucleosides through an efficient and environmentally friendly methodology.[a] Dr.

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