Nature-inspired Enzyme engineering and sustainable catalysis: biochemical clues from the world of plants and extremophiles

Abstract

The use of enzymes to accelerate chemical reactions for the synthesis of industrially important products is rapidly gaining popularity. Biocatalysis is an environment-friendly approach as it not only uses non-toxic, biodegradable, and renewable raw materials but also helps to reduce waste generation. In this context, enzymes from organisms living in extreme conditions (extremozymes) have been studied extensively and used in industries (food and pharmaceutical), agriculture, and molecular biology, as they are adapted to catalyze reactions withstanding harsh environmental conditions. Enzyme engineering plays a key role in integrating the structure-function insights from reference enzymes and their utilization for developing improvised catalysts. It helps to transform the enzymes to enhance their activity, stability, substrates-specificity, and substrate-versatility by suitably modifying enzyme structure, thereby creating new variants of the enzyme with improved physical and chemical properties. Here, we have illustrated the relatively less-tapped potentials of plant enzymes in general and their sub-class of extremozymes for industrial applications. Plants are exposed to a wide range of abiotic and biotic stresses due to their sessile nature, for which they have developed various mechanisms, including the production of stress-response enzymes. While extremozymes from microorganisms have been extensively studied, there are clear indications that plants and algae also produce extremophilic enzymes as their survival strategy, which may find industrial applications. Typical plant enzymes, such as ascorbate peroxidase, papain, carbonic anhydrase, glycoside hydrolases and others have been examined in this review with respect to their stress-tolerant features and further improvement via enzyme engineering. Some rare instances of plant-derived enzymes that point to greater exploration for industrial use have also been presented here. The overall implication is to utilize biochemical clues from the plant-based enzymes for robust, efficient, and substrate/reaction conditions-versatile scaffolds or reference leads for enzyme engineering.

Enzymatic Hydrolysis of Kraft and Sulfite Pulps: What Is the Best Cellulosic Substrate for Industrial Saccharification?

“…Food security principles around the world imply an increasing use of abundant nonstarch polysaccharide sources, including wood, to produce important industrial bio-based products. That requires developing new technologies, including primarily efficient enzymatic hydrolysis of polysaccharides [1,2]. Deep saccharification is one of the main tasks in this context; it remains challenging due to the recalcitrant structure of wood lignocellulose [3,4].…”

Structural Insights into the Catalytic Activity of Cyclobacterium marinum N-Acetylglucosamine Deacetylase

“…However, the limited thermostability and activity of GlcNAc hinder the use of this enzyme in industrial applications. To this end, elucidation of the structure of this enzyme may facilitate rational enzyme engineering approaches through informed design …”