Abstract
Enzymes are proteins that control the efficiency and effectiveness of biological reactions and systems, as well as of engineered biomimetic processes. This review highlights current applications of a diverse range of enzymes for biofuel production, plastics, and chemical waste management, as well as for detergent, textile, and food production and preservation industries respectively. Challenges regarding the transposition of enzymes from their natural purpose and environment into synthetic practice are discussed. For example, temperature and pH-induced enzyme fragilities, short shelf life, low-cost efficiency, poor user-controllability, and subsequently insufficient catalytic activity were shown to decrease pertinence and profitability in large-scale production considerations. Enzyme immobilization was shown to improve and expand upon enzyme usage within a profit and impact-oriented commercial world and through enzyme-material and interfaces integration. With particular focus on the growing biomedical market, examples of enzyme immobilization within or onto hyaluronic acid (HA)-based complexes are discussed as a definable way to improve upon and/or make possible the next generation of medical undertakings. As a polysaccharide formed in every living organism, HA has proven beneficial in biomedicine for its high biocompatibility and controllable biodegradability, viscoelasticity, and hydrophilicity. Complexes developed with this molecule have been utilized to selectively deliver drugs to a desired location and at a desired rate, improve the efficiency of tissue regeneration, and serve as a viable platform for biologically accepted sensors. In similar realms of enzyme immobilization, HA’s ease in crosslinking allows the molecule to user-controllably enhance the design of a given platform in terms of both chemical and physical characteristics to thus best support successful and sustained enzyme usage. Such examples do not only demonstrate the potential of enzyme-based applications but further, emphasize future market trends and accountability.
Highlights
This review provides an overview of current implementation of enzymes in synthetic applications with focus on biofuel [1,2,3], textile [4,5,6,7,8], detergent [4], waste management [8,9], and food and drink industries [10,11] respectively
The application of enzymes for catalytic processes has become an impactful sector in biofuels, plastic and chemical waste management, detergents, textiles, and food production and preservation
There are limitations, as their systematic benefits are accompanied by their sensitivity to synthetic environments, with such caveats leading to their denaturation and their loss of catalytic activity in temperatures and acidic conditions
Summary
Working from the cellular to organismic level, each of the physiological systems that govern the biological world requires and/or benefits from the inherited abilities of enzymes, proteins that catalyze a wide variety of unique and specific processes. Such biocatalysts decrease the necessary energy input to facilitate biological reactions with incredible selectivity sparking interest for synthetic implementation as active candidates in a variety of engineered applications. There are, limitations that accompany the benefits that enzymes bring to the scientific community, most associated with their pH and temperature-induced fragility, as well as unprofitable user-controllability, shelf-life, and scale-up systematic integration, just to name a few. Potential for marketability and perspectives on consumer usage are provided to capitalize on the extended implementation that enzyme-based products could have
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