Plant Products for Pharmacology: Application of Enzymes in Their Transformations

Abstract

Different plant products have been subjected to detailed investigations due to their increasing importance for improving human health. Plants are sources of many groups of natural products, of which large number of new compounds has already displayed their high impact in human medicine. This review deals with the natural products which may be found dissolved in lipid phase (phytosterols, vitamins etc.). Often subsequent convenient transformation of natural products may further improve the pharmacological properties of new potential medicaments based on natural products. To respect basic principles of sustainable and green procedures, enzymes are often employed as efficient natural catalysts in such plant product transformations. Transformations of lipids and other natural products under the conditions of enzyme catalysis show increasing importance in environmentally safe and sustainable production of pharmacologically important compounds. In this review, attention is focused on lipases, efficient and convenient biocatalysts for the enantio-and regioselective formation / hydrolysis of ester bond in a wide variety of both natural and unnatural substrates, including plant products, eg. plant oils and other natural lipid phase compounds. The application of enzymes for preparation of acylglycerols and transformation of other natural products provides big advantage in comparison with employing of conventional chemical methods: Increased selectivity, higher product purity and quality, energy conservation, elimination of heavy metal catalysts, and sustainability of the employed OPEN ACCESSInt. J. Mol. Sci. 2008, 9 2448 processes, which are catalyzed by enzymes. Two general procedures are used in the transformation of lipid-like natural products: (a) Hydrolysis/alcoholysis of triacylglycerols and (b) esterification of glycerol. The reactions can be performed under conventional conditions or in supercritical fluids/ionic liquids. Enzyme-catalyzed reactions in supercritical fluids combine the advantages of biocatalysts (substrate specificity under mild reaction conditions) and supercritical fluids (high mass-transfer rate, easy separation of reaction products from the solvent, environmental benefits based on excluding organic solvents from the production process).

Phyto/rhizoremediation studies using long-term PCB-contaminated soil

“…The experiments documented that not all seemingly beneficial conditions and combinations brought desirable effect. Successful bioremediation requires an understanding of site-specific factors that limit biotransformation and specificity and stereoselectivity of enzymes involved (Jurcek et al 2008;Zarevucka and Wimmer 2008) and also bioremediation engineers and scientists need to satisfy the physiological and nutritional requirements of specific degraders and ensure that a competitive advantage is provided to desirable (but not undesirable) biotransformation pathways (Singer et al 2003;Mackova et al 2007). Achieving this can be a very complex task.…”

Ethnopharmacological survey of medicinal herbs in Jordan, the Northern Badia region

“…They must be sifted, correlated, investigated and potentiated (Cordell and Colvard, 2005;Zarevucka and Wimmer, 2008). Thus, the relative importance of a medicinal plant within a culture and the homogeneity of information regarding its traditional medicinal uses are valuable and need to be evaluated using quantitative tools, such as use value (UV) and informant consensus factors (Fic) (Gazzaneo et al, 2005).…”

Extraction and Purification of Collagenase Enzymes: A Critical Review

“…Enzymes are used in a variety of industrial processes to create an array of foods (Foegeding and Larick, 1986;Cronlund and Woychik, 1987;Christensen, 1989;Ashie and Lanier, 2000;Dĩaz-López and García-Carreńo, 2000;Shahidi and JanakKamil, 2001), cosmetics (Griffith et al, 1969;Lods et al, 2000;Sim et al, 2000;Spök, 2006;Mohorcic et al, 2006), nutraceutical (Zhao, 2007;Zarevúcka and Wimmer, 2008;Guerard et al, 2010) and medicinal products (Agren et al, 1992;Takahashi et al, 1999;Mirastschijski et al, 2002;Püllen et al, 2002;Chung et al, 2004). Enzymatic methods offer advantages over chemical techniques such as substrate specificity and elevated activity under mild conditions that allow better control of the production processes (Zaks et al, 1988;Shahidi and JanakKamil, 2001).…”