Carbohydrate Modifying Biocatalysts

Carbohydrates have long been disregarded by the scientific community due to their complex structure and a lack of suitable experimental methods for structure determination. This book provides an overview of the structure, function, and application of carbohydrate-modifying biocatalysts. It explores glycoconjugates and carbohydrate-modifying enzymes

This book provides an actual overview of the structure, function, and application of carbohydrate-modifying biocatalysts. Carbohydrates have been disregarded for a long time by the scientific community, mainly due to their complex structure. Meanwhile, the situation changed with increasing knowledge about the key role carbohydrates play in biological processes such as recognition, signal transduction, immune responses, and others. An outcome of research activities in glycoscience is the development of several new pharmaceuticals against serious diseases such as malaria, cancer, and various storage diseases. Furthermore, the employment of carbohydrate-modifying biocatalysts—enzymes as well as microorganisms—will contribute significantly to the development of environmentally friendly processes boosting a shift of the chemical industry from petroleum- to bio-based production of chemicals from renewable resources. The updated content of the second edition of this book has been extended by discussing the current state of the art of using recombinantly expressed carbohydrate-modifying biocatalysts and the synthesis of minicellulosomes in connection with consolidated bioprocessing of lignocellulosic material. Furthermore, a synthetic biology approach for using DAHP-dependent aldolases to catalyze asymmetric aldol reactions is presented.

In this Completely Revised and Extended Edition with a significantly enhanced content, all Chapters have been updated considering relevant literature and recent developments until 2016 together with application oriented examples with a focus on Industrial Biocatalysis. Newly treated topics comprise among others systems metabolic engineering approaches, metagenome screening, new tools for pathway engineering, and de-novo computational design as actual research areas in biocatalysis. Information about different aspects of RNA technologies, and completely new Chapters on 'Fluorescent Proteins' and 'Biocatalysis and Nanotechnology' are also included.

This volume of Pharmaceutical Biocatalysis starts with a discussion on the importance of biocatalytic synthesis approaches for a sustainable and environmentally friendly production of pharmaceuticals and active pharmaceutical ingredients. Among the enzymes discussed in detail with respect to their pharmaceutical relevance are cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterases playing an important role in modulating signal transduction in various cell types; human DOPA decarboxylase, related to Parkinson's disease and aromatic amino acid decarboxylase deficiency; and phospholipase D enzymes as drug targets. Isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 and 2 mutations are novel therapeutic targets in acute myeloid leukemia. An additional chapter is devoted to the use of enzymes for prodrug activation in cancer therapy. The other topics include small-molecule inhibitors targeting receptor tyrosine kinases in cancer, β-Lactams and related compounds as antibacterials, non-vitamin K oral anticoagulants for the treatment of thromboembolic diseases, and the molecular mechanisms for statin pleiotropy and its clinical relevance in cardiovascular diseases. The last chapter is a review of lysosomal storage disorders with an overview of approved drugs for treating these disorders by enzyme replacement therapy.

Biocatalysis has become an essential tool in the chemical industry and is the core of industrial biotechnology, also known as white biotechnology, making use of biocatalysts in terms of enzymes or whole cells in chemical processes as an alternative to chemical catalysts. This shift can be seen in the many areas of daily life where biocatalysts—with their environmentally friendly properties—are currently employed. Drivers are the big societal challenges resulting from concerns about the global climate change and the need for an assured energy supply. Modern biocatalysis relies to a large extent on the tremendous advances in the so-called omics techniques and the structural elucidation of biomolecules, which have led to synthetic biology and metabolic engineering as new research fields with high application potential for the rational design of enzymes and microbial production strains. In this book, renowned scientists discuss the actual developments in these research fields together with a variety of application-oriented topics.

Compiles the recent agricultural-biocatalysis research results by interdisciplinary teams from international institutes for chemistry, biochemistry, biotechnology, and materials and chemical engineering, Investigating important agricultural-biocatalytic topics related to biochemical conversions or bioremediation, modern biological and chemical applications Covers the research on biosynthesis, biocatalysis, and photosynthesis aspects for use in agro-chemistry, including nano-biocatalytic processing, atrazine toxicity, and theoretical studies in biocatalysis and biological processes.

Nanobiocatalysis has rapidly developed into a subarea of enzyme biotechnology. It combines the advances in nanotechnology that have generated nanoscale materials of different sizes, shapes, and physicochemical properties, and the excellent characteristics of biocatalysts into an innovative technology. This book provides an overview of the various relations between nanotechnology and biocatalysis. It discusses the fabrication and application of nanomaterials for the immobilization of enzymes used in the sustainable production of goods and chemicals. Nanosupports have several advantages compared with bulk solid materials because of their high surface area, which results in a significantly reduced mass transfer limitation and comparatively high enzyme loading. These characteristics are also of great use for applications in the fields of enzymatic biosensors, biofuel cells, bioelectronics, and photoelectrochemical analyte detection, where conductive nanomaterials improve the rate of electron transfer. The book also presents an overview of nanotoxicology and covers nanostructured enzyme catalysis in organic solvents and its potential application for biodiesel production, probing of enzymatic activity, and identification of enzyme functions of inorganic nanoparticles as enzyme mimics.

We are in a phase of the evolution of biotechnology in which the true and potential commercial importance of carbohydrates is becoming appre- ated more fully. Progress in providing hard facts to establish the commercial value ofpolysaccharides and oligosaccharides is limited, as always, by lack of funding and by a relative shortage of skilled practitioners in the production and analysis of those materials. Carbohydrate science has a reputation, not unmerited, for technical difficulty owing to the structural similarity of the many monosaccharide monomers and the potential, and real, complexity of oligosaccharides and polysaccharides, particularly heterosaccharides conta- ing many different monomers. Modem analytical and synthetic methods, in many cases using enzyme technology, are beginning to allow this complexity to be unraveled. Carbohydrate Biotechnology Protocols is aimed at those newcomers who have an interest in the production and use of carbohydrate materials, but have shied away from involvement for lack of detailed descriptions of appropriate methods, including the type of practical hints that may be provided by those skilled in those methods, but that are rarely described in research papers. The majority of the contributions to this book conform to the established format of the Methods in Biotechnology series. They begin with the theoretical and c- mercial background to the method or group of methods, provide a list of the reagents and equipment required for the procedure, then give a detailed st- by-step description of how to carry out the protocol.