Study on the effects of Morinda citrifolia fruit extracts of Viet Nam on hepatic antioxidant enzymes and P450 enzyme of rat. Results: Morinda citrifolia fruit extracts of Viet Nam had effective antioxidant activities. In CCl4 treated rats received this extract, MDA’s level decreased 10%, SOD activity increased 31% compared with control poisoned rats. Besides, P450 activity os CCl4 treated rats increased by 49.5% when treated by Morinda citrifolia fruit extracts compared with CCl4 treated rats didn’t received extracts, but also decreased by 30.3% compared with control rats. In rats received Morinda citrifolia fruit extracts, P450 activity increased 24.8%
Morinda ; Animal Experimentation ; Metabolism ; Enzymes

The development of biotechnology and the in-depth research on disease mechanisms have led to increased application of enzymes in the treatment of diseases. In addition, enzymes have shown great potential in drug manufacturing, particularly in production of non-natural organic compounds, due to the advantages of mild reaction conditions, high catalytic efficiency, high specificity, high selectivity and few side reactions. Moreover, the application of genetic engineering, chemical modification of enzymes and immobilization technologies have further improved the function of enzymes. This review summarized the advances of using enzymes as drugs for disease treatment or as catalysts for drug manufacturing, followed by discussing challenges, potential solutions and future perspectives on the application of enzymes in the medical and pharmaceutical field.
Biocatalysis ; Biotechnology ; Catalysis ; Drug Compounding ; Enzymes/metabolism*

Enzyme separation, purification, immobilization, and catalytic performance improvement have been the research hotspots and frontiers as well as the challenges in the field of biocatalysis. Thus, the development of novel methods for enzyme purification, immobilization, and improvement of their catalytic performance and storage are of great significance. Herein, ferritin was fused with the lichenase gene to achieve the purpose. The results showed that the fused gene was highly expressed in the cells of host strains, and that the resulted fusion proteins could self-aggregate into carrier-free active immobilized enzymes in vivo. Through low-speed centrifugation, the purity of the enzymes was up to > 90%, and the activity recovery was 61.1%. The activity of the enzymes after storage for 608 h was higher than the initial activity. After being used for 10 cycles, it still maintained 50.0% of the original activity. The insoluble active lichenase aggregates could spontaneously dissolve back into the buffer and formed the soluble polymeric lichenases with the diameter of about 12 nm. The specific activity of them was 12.09 times that of the free lichenase, while the catalytic efficiency was 7.11 times and the half-life at 50 ℃ was improved 11.09 folds. The results prove that the ferritin can be a versatile tag to trigger target enzyme self-aggregation and oligomerization in vivo, which can simplify the preparation of the target enzymes, improve their catalysis performance, and facilitate their storage.
Biocatalysis ; Enzymes, Immobilized/metabolism* ; Ferritins/metabolism* ; Glycoside Hydrolases/metabolism*

Industrial enzymes play dual roles for the production of chemicals and biochemicals, one is to act as direct catalyst for the reaction, the other is to participate in the fermentation process to convert substrates to fermentable sugars or to make it more efficient. The review briefs the applications of industrial enzymes for chemical productions, with emphasis on direct conversion of starch and their roles in bioethanol production process, also analyzes the benefits by using new enzymes and prospects for future development.
Biocatalysis ; Biochemistry ; Chemical Industry ; Enzymes ; chemistry ; metabolism ; Enzymes, Immobilized ; Ethanol ; chemistry ; Fermentation

It is well known that non-aqueous enzymatic catalysis has emerged as an important area of enzyme engineering with the advantages of higher substrate solubility, increased stereoselectivity, modified substrate specificity and suppression of unwanted water-dependent side reactions. As a result, non-aqueous enzymatic catalysis has been applied in the biocatalytic synthesis of important pharmaceuticals and nutriceuticals. With the advancement of non-aqueous enzymatic catalysis in recent years, the efforts have been centered on the discovery and modification of solvent-tolerant biocatalysts for non-aqueous environments. Additionally, with the inevitable trends of green chemistry and sustainable development, green solvents have been utilized for increased number of enzymatic reactions to replace conventional organic solvents. In this review, modification, immobilization and mutagenesis of various enzymes for non-aqueous catalysis are discussed. Recent progress of non-aqueous enzymatic catalysis in solvent-free environments, reverse micelles, supercritical liquid and ionic liquid are also presented. In particular, while direct evolution, high-throughput screening and site-directed mutagenesis are combined as powerful tools for protein engineering, vapor/solid/ice water mixture, sticky solid-state liquid crystal and high density salt suspension are the future directions for solvent engineering in order to broaden the utility and elevate the efficiency of non-aqueous enzymatic catalysis.
Animals ; Biocatalysis ; Enzymes ; genetics ; metabolism ; Enzymes, Immobilized ; Humans ; Mutagenesis, Site-Directed ; Solvents

In vitro multi-enzyme molecular machines that follow the designed multi-enzyme pathways, require the rational optimization and adaptation of several purified or partially purified enzyme components, in order to convert certain substrates into target compounds in vitro in an efficient manner. This type of molecular machine is component-based and modularized, so that its design, assembly, and regulation processes are highly flexible. Recently, the advantages of in vitro multi-enzyme molecular machines on the precise control of reaction process and the enhancement of product yield have suggested their great application potential in biomanufacturing. Studies on in vitro multi-enzyme molecular machines have become an important branch of synthetic biology, and are gaining increasing attentions. This article systematically reviews the enzyme component-/module-based construction strategy of in vitro multi-enzyme molecular machines, as well as the research progress on the improvement of compatibility among enzyme components/modules. The current challenges and future prospects of in vitro multi-enzyme molecular machines are also discussed.
Biotechnology ; Enzymes ; chemistry ; metabolism ; Multienzyme Complexes ; chemistry ; metabolism ; Synthetic Biology

Enzyme engineering is a combined technology of enzymology and engineering, which is becoming one of the major fields of modem biotechnology. In recent years, China has made some advances in enzyme engineering research. To promote enzyme engineering research in China, invited reviews and selected research articles were published in this special issue of "Enzyme Engineering". The reviews and research articles focus on the fields of enzymatic conversion, therapeutic enzymes, enzymes as additives to animal feedstuff, enzymes for degradation of organic pollutes, and enzymes for biofuel and biorefinery.
Biotechnology ; trends ; China ; Enzymes ; chemistry ; genetics ; metabolism ; Protein Engineering ; trends

Industrial biocatalysis is currently attracting much attention to rebuild or substitute traditional producing process of chemicals and drugs. One of key focuses in industrial biocatalysis is biocatalyst, which is usually one kind of microbial enzyme. In the recent, new technologies of bioinformatics have played and will continue to play more and more significant roles in researches of industrial biocatalysis in response to the waves of genomic revolution. One of the key applications of bioinformatics in biocatalysis is the discovery and identification of the new biocatalyst through advanced DNA and protein sequence search, comparison and analyses in Internet database using different algorithm and software. The unknown genes of microbial enzymes can also be simply harvested by primer design on the basis of bioinformatics analyses. The other key applications of bioinformatics in biocatalysis are the modification and improvement of existing industrial biocatalyst. In this aspect, bioinformatics is of great importance in both rational design and directed evolution of microbial enzymes. Based on the successful prediction of tertiary structures of enzymes using the tool of bioinformatics, the undermentioned experiments, i.e. site-directed mutagenesis, fusion protein construction, DNA family shuffling and saturation mutagenesis, etc, are usually of very high efficiency. On all accounts, bioinformatics will be an essential tool for either biologist or biological engineer in the future researches of industrial biocatalysis, due to its significant function in guiding and quickening the step of discovery and/or improvement of novel biocatalysts.
Biocatalysis ; Computational Biology ; trends ; Enzymes ; chemistry ; metabolism ; Industrial Microbiology

Residue of Mori Cortex was studied to optimize its enzymatic hydrolysis process, and explore its potential as a carbon source for biochemistry and biofuel production. The cellulose content of diluted acid pretreated (DAP) and non-pretreated from Mori Cortex were measured in this study, and the results showed that the cellulose content of DAP and non-pretreated from Mori Cortex were 52.5% and 47%, respectively. This higher cellulose content indicated that residue of Mori Cortex had the potential to act as a carbon source for biochemistry and biofuel production. Enzymatic hydrolysis of pretreated and non-pretreated from Mori Cortex was conducted under different enzyme loading amount. 40 FPU·(g DW）⁻¹ enzyme loading was determined as the optimal amount by comparing the yield of sugar and the rate of enzymolysis. Under this condition, the concentrations of glucose, xylose, arabinose sugar were 23.82, 4.84, 3.6 g·L⁻¹, and the corresponding enzymatic hydrolysis rate was 45.33% which was 2.3 times higher than that of non-pretreated from Morus alba residues. Fed-batch enzymatic hydrolysis was conducted finally to get higher sugar yield, and the final glucose concentration reached up to 38 g·L⁻¹ with the enzymatic hydrolysis rate of 36.19%. The results indicated that Mori Cortex residue had higher cellulose and hemicellulose contents, so it had the potential to become a carbon source to produce the bio-chemicals and biofuels. Through enzymatic hydrolysis, it can be converted into microbial available monosaccharides; and through fermentation, it can be converted into high value-added chemicals, biofuels, etc., to solve the problem of residue pollution, and achieve the sustainable development and greening of Chinese pharmaceutical production process.
Carbohydrates ; Cellulose ; chemistry ; Enzymes ; metabolism ; Fermentation ; Hydrolysis ; Morus ; chemistry

Pictet-Spenglerases (P-Sases) catalyze the Pictet-Spengler (P-S) reactions and exhibit high stereoselectivity and regioselectivity under mild conditions. The typical P-S reaction refers to the condensation and recyclization of β-arylethylamine with aldehyde or ketone under acidic conditions to form tetrahydroisoquinoline and β-carboline alkaloid derivatives. The related enzymatic products of P-Sases are the backbones of various bioactive compounds, including clinical drugs: morphine, noscapine, quinine, berberine, ajmaline, morphine. Furthermore, the activity of P-Sases in stereoselective and regioselective catalysis is also valuable for chemoenzymatic synthesis. Therefore, this review summarizes the research progress in the discovery, functional identification, biological characteristics and catalytic applications of P-Sases, which provide the useful theoretical reference in future P-Sases research and development.
Alkaloids/chemistry* ; Catalysis ; Enzymes/metabolism* ; Research/trends* ; Tetrahydroisoquinolines/chemistry*