Vibrational Spectroscopy as a Promising Tool to Study Enzyme-Carrier Interactions: A Review

Abstract

The high selectivity and specificity together with the catalytic activity of enzymes lead them to be a key tool in biotechnology industries. The enzyme immobilization on a carrier material facilitates the reuse of the enzyme and improves its stability. This article is a comprehensive review that reports papers in which different enzymes have been immobilized on distinct carrier materials and enzyme-carrier interactions were evaluated by infrared and/or Raman spectroscopy. Vibrational spectroscopy was used to inspect the spectral bands of different classes of enzymes before and after their immobilization on carriers. In fact, the characteristic spectral bands that prove the interaction enzyme-carrier are related with the amide functional groups of enzymes. In addition, those interactions are characterized by the shift, broadening, or increment on intensity of specific bands in reference to the spectrum of their carrier material. In this review, 20 of these studies used infrared spectroscopy and only three used Raman spectroscopy. The use of both vibrational spectroscopy techniques is increasingly due to their proved capacity to characterize the enzyme-carrier interactions without damaging them.