Fungal Lipases: Insights into Molecular Structures and Biotechnological Applications in Medicine and Dairy Industry

Abstract

Fungal biotechnology can advance the transition to a bio-based circular economy and has the ability to sustainably produce economic food, chemicals, fuels, textiles, and contribute to pharmaceutical and medical applications. Fungal and bacterial lipases as versatile biological catalysts have given a promising prospect in meeting the needs for most industries employing catalytic abilities, hydrolysis, esterification, and transesterification. Fungal lipases exhibit various classes with broad stability to pH ranging from pH 4.0 to 11.0 (alkaline or acidic), temperature ranging from 10 to 96 °C (thermophilic or psychotropic) with diverse catalytic abilities including reversibility of reaction, broad isoelectric points, and substrate specificity. Reduced production costs and easy genetic manipulation supported gaining increased interest. Fungal lipases are extracellular, and their production is influenced by nutritional and physicochemical factors which emphasis the optimization role of fermentation condition for their production. Knowledge of structural features plays an important role in designing and engineering lipases for specific purposes. In silico methods help in the predictions of enzymatic affinity, activity, specificity, and selectivity of newly discovered proteins. This kind of bioinformatics approaches allow the screening of potential target for application in bioremediation and take advantage of fungi enzymes for industrial applications. This chapter describes various sources of lipases, their properties, purification methods, classification, catalytic mechanism, and optimization. We will also shed the light on the3D molecular structures of fungal lipases, bioinformatics approaches, and potential sustainable industrial applications of fungal and bacterial lipases for a green economy which make lipases as biocatalysts of choice for the present and future.