Chapter 7 - Enzyme Engineering and Industrial Bioprocess

Abstract

Enzymes play an important role in life activities due to their specific and efficient catalytic action. Nowadays, enzymes derived from microorganisms have been extensively developed to serve various human needs, such as brewing, enzymatic conversion, disease diagnosis and treatment, drug production, environmental pollutant removal, etc. However, natural enzymes are often very expensive, and most of them are difficult to be effectively utilized because they are very “delicious.” In recent years, the development of structural biology and genetic manipulation technology has enabled scientists to effectively reform and design enzyme molecules with “purposes,” which promotes the development of molecular enzyme engineering. In summary, molecular enzyme engineering is a discipline that uses the genetic engineering and protein engineering methods and techniques to study the cloning and expression of enzyme genes, the relationship between the structure and function of enzyme proteins, and the redesign and orientation of enzymes to further improve excellent enzyme or new functional enzyme. This chapter mainly introduces enzyme engineering research from the following three aspects: firstly, the use of genetic engineering technology to produce large amounts of enzyme preparations; secondly, through molecular site-directed mutagenesis and in vitro molecular-directed evolution of natural enzyme protein molecular modification; finally, the industrial application of enzymes examples.