Chapter 4 - Robust enzymes designing for efficient biocatalysis

Abstract

This particular chapter focuses on the robust enzymes designing to signify the high value of biocatalysis engineering. Aiming to further scale up the ongoing industrial and biotechnological revolution and fulfill the ever-increasing industrial demands, the development of multipurpose biocatalysts via biocatalysis engineering and/or protein engineering is intensifying with tunable characteristics of numerous industrially relevant enzymes. With ever-increasing scientific knowledge and industrial awareness, enzyme-based green biocatalysts have become a powerful norm and present noteworthy characteristics, such as process efficiency, high turnover, high yield, selectivity, hyperactivity, stability, recyclability, and cost-effectiveness, which traditional catalytic agents fail to demonstrate on their own. Nevertheless, enzymes in free forms cannot fulfill the dire need of the industrial application, and thus are being engineered and/or tailored for efficient biocatalysis purposes. In this context, protein engineering arena provides outstanding opportunities to design and construct novel industrial biocatalysts with improved or new multifunctionalities such as induced catalytic activity, high stability against extreme pH and temperature, broader substrate specificity, stability against reaction product inhibition, stability against harsh reaction chemicals/reagents, reusability and recyclability, prolonged shelf-life, and overall high cost-effective ratio. Herein, this chapter summarizes recent advances related to the protein engineering approaches to design robust biocatalytic cues to catalyze requisite industrial process efficiently. Several new and advanced engineering approaches including enzyme immobilization using nanomaterials, microenvironment engineering via substrate engineering, and structure-guided and computational modeling-assisted protein engineering are discussed with suitable examples to engineer multipurpose biocatalyst. In summary, continuous developments in protein engineering is a unique way that provides robust biocatalytic tools to strengthen research for industrial bioprocesses.