Enzymes from Higher Eukaryotes for Industrial Biocatalysis, Food Technol
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Z. LIU et al.: Enzymes from Higher Eukaryotes for Industrial Biocatalysis, Food Technol. Biotechnol. 42 (4) 237–249 (2004) 237 UDC 577.128.15 ISSN 1330-9862 review (FTB-1420) Enzymes from Higher Eukaryotes for Industrial Biocatalysis Zhibin Liu1, Roland Weis1 and Anton Glieder2* 1Research Centre Applied Biocatalysis, Petersgasse 14, A-8010 Graz, Austria 2Institute of Molecular Biotechnology, Petersgasse 14, A-8010 Graz, Austria Received: August 6, 2004 Revised version: September 9, 2004 Accepted: November 22, 2004 Summary The industrial production of fine chemicals, feed and food ingredients, pharmaceuti- cals, agrochemicals and their respective intermediates relies on an increasing application of biocatalysis, i.e. on enzyme or whole-cell catalyzed conversions of molecules. Simple procedures for discovery, cloning and over-expression as well as fast growth favour fungi, yeasts and especially bacteria as sources of biocatalysts. Higher eukaryotes also harbour an almost unlimited number of potential biocatalysts, although to date the limited supply of enzymes, the high heterogeneity of enzyme preparations and the hazard of infectious contaminants keep some interesting candidates out of reach for industrial bioprocesses. In the past only a few animal and plant enzymes from agricultural waste materials were em- ployed in food processing. The use of bacterial expression strains or non-conventional yeasts for the heterologous production of efficient eukaryotic enzymes can overcome the bottleneck in enzyme supply and provide sufficient amounts of homogenous enzyme pre- parations for reliable and economically feasible applications at large scale. Ideal enzymatic processes represent an environmentally friendly, »near-to-completion« conversion of (mostly non-natural) substrates to pure products. Recent developments demonstrate the commer- cial feasibility of large-scale biocatalytic processes employing enzymes from higher eu- karyotes (e.g. plants, animals) and also their usefulness in some small-scale industrial ap- plications. Key words: enzymes, eukaryotes, industrial biocatalysis Introduction Microorganisms and their enzymes are widely ex- as well as commodity and agrochemicals (1–4). The pre- ploited in biocatalysis to produce a broad spectrum of ferred use of enzymes from bacteria and fungi in com- fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals and their building blocks, petitive large-scale bioprocesses stems from their simple * Corresponding author; E-mail: [email protected] Abbreviations: CYP: cytochrome P450; EDA: ethylenediamine; e.e.: enantiomeric excess; FDH: formate dehydrogenase; GAPDH: glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase; GDH: glutamate dehydrogenase; GlcNAc: N-acetyl-D-glucosamine; HbHNL: hydroxynitrile lyase from Hevea brasiliensis; HLADH: horse liver alcohol dehydrogenase; HNLs: hydroxynitrile lyases; LDH: lactate dehydrogenase; LuHNL: hydroxynitrile lyase from Linum usitatissimum; MDL: mandelonitrile lyase; MeHNL: hydroxynitrile lyase from Manihot esculenta; Neu5Ac: N-acetylneuraminic acid; PaHNL: hydroxynitrile lyase from Prunus amygdalus; PDH: phenylalanine dehydrogenase; PLE: pig liver esterase; PPL: porcine pancreatic lipase; rPLE: recombinant PLE isoenzyme; SbHNL: hydroxynitrile lyase from Sorghum bicolor; YADH: yeast alcohol dehydrogenase 238 Z. LIU et al.: Enzymes from Higher Eukaryotes for Industrial Biocatalysis, Food Technol. Biotechnol. 42 (4) 237–249 (2004) and quick genetic manipulation (5) and also the simple genic P450s synthesize steroids and other substances access to large amounts of native enzymes. For compari- necessary for the maintenance of cell wall integrity and son, higher eukaryotes provide interesting enzymes (6–8), cellular differentiation. The majority of enzymes of the but they usually need to be isolated and purified or human xenobiotic group are expressed in liver micro- cloned and over-expressed in suitable hosts in order to somes. They perform a number of physiological func- obtain sufficient quantities for biocatalytic applications. tions but their primary role is in the metabolism of xeno- In the past years, the use of synthetic host-adopted genes biotics. A large number of potential drug candidates fail and codon-optimized Escherichia coli strains and the de- in later stages of drug development because they are velopment of highly successful eukaryotic expression readily degraded or because they interfere with the me- systems, such as the methylotrophic yeasts Pichia pasto- tabolism of other therapeutics by human cytochrome P450 ris and Hansenula polymorpha, have enabled the produc- (CYP) isozymes. An early assessment of drug/drug in- tion of large quantities of eukaryotic enzymes within a teractions and isozyme-specific CYP450 induction or in- short time (9). hibition is an essential part of the modern drug discov- An increasing experience in molecular modelling ery process (20). (10,11), which rationalizes molecule and biocatalyst en- Among these CYP isozymes, the CYP3A enzyme fa- gineering, as well as recent progress in high-throughput mily is responsible for the hepatic metabolism of approxi- technologies for the expression and engineering of eu- mately 60 % of currently available pharmaceutical agents karyotic proteins provide great potential to extend in- (such as Mephenytoin®, Nevirapine®, Nifedipine®, Nicar- dustrial applications of eukaryotic enzymes (12). Directed dipine®, Cyclophosphamide®, Clotrimazole®, Erythromy- evolution of enzymes in the test tube by repeated cycles cin® and Fluconazole®)(21,22). About 25 % of all drugs of random mutagenesis or recombination followed by used today are substrates for the CYP2D6 isozyme (23) screening and selection provides a powerful tool if and many others inhibit or induce its activity. Approxi- structural or mechanistic information is not available mately 15 % of all drugs used today are metabolized by and if efficient screening technology exists (13). In addi- the CYP1A2 isozyme (23). tion, this technology gives access to improved enzymes Industrial application of human P450s evolves into due to mutations that could not be predicted based on two different directions: (i) the production of active knowledge from static enzyme models. pharmaceutical intermediates, and (ii) the simple and Enzymes from higher eukaryotes have been tradi- fast production of metabolites in mg-scale for drug de- tionally used in the food industry, for example, as food velopment. additives, in fruit processing, in wine brewing and as Human cytochrome P450s have been expressed in pharmaceutical additives. Examples include the extensive different systems such as mammalian cells (24,25), insect use of papain, bromelain, chymosin, ficin, lipoxygenase cells (26), yeasts (27–29) and bacteria such as Escherichia or pepsin (14). However, most of these processes were coli (30,31). E. coli expression systems have the advan- already developed in the 1980s (15–17) and therefore tages of being easier and less expensive to operate and cannot be considered as recent applications, although the of yielding higher quantities of recombinant proteins. products are still widely used. Folding and solubility problems are usually solved by Oxidoreductases (E.C. 1), hydrolases (E.C. 3), lyases synthesis of optimized genes and N-terminal fusions (E.C. 4) and isomerases (E.C. 5) provide the vast major- with other protein sequences that allow correct targeting ity of examples of higher eukaryotic enzymes for indus- or increase protein solubility. Dramatic improvement in trial applications; there are no commercial processes re- the levels of reconstitution of activity of human CYP450 ported for plant or animal enzymes from other catalytic in Escherichia coli was obtained by coexpression of P450 groups. In this review, the main focus is on implemented reductase (32,33). Recently, a human mitochondrial cyto- biocatalytic applications of eukaryotic enzymes in in- chrome P450 (P450 aldosterone synthase) was function- dustrial processes for the production of fine chemicals, ally expressed in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces as well as some recent promising developments at pilot pombe. No co-expression of P450 reductase was needed scale and for the preparative synthesis of compounds for efficient substrate conversion by intact fission yeast for industrial drug development processes. cells. Expression was much higher in fission yeast mi- crosomes than in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the trans- formed yeast showed inducible activity for the in vivo Production of Fine Chemicals and Metabolites conversion of considerable amounts of 11-deoxycortisol with E.C. 1 – Oxidoreductases to cortisol. Furthermore, 11-deoxycorticosterone could be converted almost entirely to corticosterone, with small Mammalian cytochrome P450 amounts of 18-hydroxycorticosterone and aldosterone as Mammalian cytochrome P450 (CYP) monooxygena- by-products (29). This study can be regarded as a signif- ses comprise a superfamily of hemoproteins with extra- icant step towards simple and efficient over-expression ordinary catalytic versatility. They catalyze the metabo- and characterization of human P450s and represents lism of a wide variety of endogenous and exogenous considerable progress concerning their possible applica- compounds including environmental contaminants, hor- tions in fermentative production processes. mones, therapeutic drugs and (pro)carcinogens (18–20). The co-expression of human CYP3A4 and human The human CYP enzyme system is divided into two NADPH-cytochrome P450 oxidoreductase in insect cells large