Developments and Diversity of Proteins and Enzymes

Abstract

Proteins form an integral part of a large consortium of industrially and therapeutically important products. Thus, efficient strategies for producing high-quality proteins and enzymes at industrial scale have gained importance in the past few decades. However, the heterogeneous production of recombinant proteins at industrial setups requires remotion and optimization of certain drawbacks such as protein aggregation, contamination, unstable cultures and less productive fermentation process. Therefore, the ultimate aim is to develop bioprocess that could be utilized for efficient production of important proteins. This has led to the development of structural biology, protein engineering and bioinformatics tools for identifying and rectifying these issues at molecular level. In the postgenomic era, a huge variety of protein families are yet to be functionally characterized. In this context, the discovery of new proteins with varied functionalities can only be achieved using modern-day methodologies that incorporate sequences, structure and activity-based approaches. Later, the positive outcomes could be easily directed towards the development of stable recombinant culture and productive fermentation process alongside a cost-effective downstream process. This chapter discusses the strides in the protein/enzyme production and their biotechnological perspectives along with the limitations in scale-up. Besides, several methodologies for selecting efficient protein molecules such as directed evolution approaches as well as for studying their physicochemical characteristics such as single-molecule techniques are also described. In addition, this chapter also delineates production of therapeutic proteins and proteases and applications of chaperones in industrial production process.