Abstract
Lipases are versatile enzymes widely used in the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and food industries. They are green biocatalysts with a high potential for industrial use compared to traditional chemical methods. In recent years, lipases have been used to synthesize a wide variety of molecules of industrial interest, and extraordinary results have been reported. In this sense, this review describes the important role of lipases in the synthesis of phytosterol esters, which have attracted the scientific community’s attention due to their beneficial effects on health. A systematic search for articles and patents published in the last 20 years with the terms “phytosterol AND esters AND lipase” was carried out using the Scopus, Web of Science, Scielo, and Google Scholar databases, and the results showed that Candida rugosa lipases are the most relevant biocatalysts for the production of phytosterol esters, being used in more than 50% of the studies. The optimal temperature and time for the enzymatic synthesis of phytosterol esters mainly ranged from 30 to 101 °C and from 1 to 72 h. The esterification yield was greater than 90% for most analyzed studies. Therefore, this manuscript presents the new technological approaches and the gaps that need to be filled by future studies so that the enzymatic synthesis of phytosterol esters is widely developed.
Highlights
The safety level and the consistency of sensory attributes that the food industry has reached contrast to the low nutritional value and low healthiness of processed food, especially fast food and low-cost convenience products
In this review, we focused on lipase catalysis for phytosterol esters’ synthesis, pointing out the recent advances related to enzyme technology to reduce costs and increase productivity/yield and determining the new approaches related to enzymatic ester production and the gaps that deserve to be addressed by future studies
These findings showed that there are several innovations that were applied to improve lipase performance, which can be tested for several reaction types, such as phytosterol ester synthesis
Summary
The safety level and the consistency of sensory attributes that the food industry has reached contrast to the low nutritional value and low healthiness of processed food, especially fast food and low-cost convenience products. Phytosterol esters have demonstrated similar physiological effects as phytosterols, with lower melting points and higher oil solubility [1] These molecules have been used in food formulations, such as margarine [18], reduced-fat spreads, salad dressings [19], and cheddar cheese [20], with great results concerning tolerance and no adverse effects at daily intake [19] as well as improvements of LDL, HDL, and total cholesterol in plasma [18,20]. Lipase-catalyzed phytosterol esters’ production offers several advantages in relation to chemical synthesis, especially regarding the mild reaction conditions used and catalyst specificity, which reduce the formation of by-products [24] It seems a very promising approach but is still on a bench scale because of high production costs, related to the enzyme, and elevated reaction times [21]. In this review, we focused on lipase catalysis for phytosterol esters’ synthesis, pointing out the recent advances related to enzyme technology to reduce costs and increase productivity/yield and determining the new approaches related to enzymatic ester production and the gaps that deserve to be addressed by future studies
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