Pro­teins and pep­tides for industry

Pro­teins are ubi­quit­ous bio­lo­gic­al mac­ro­molec­ules that are made of long, linked chains of amino acids which are linked by pep­tide bonds. Short amino acid chains are called pep­tides. Pro­teins serve all liv­ing organ­isms as tools and mater­i­als for execut­ing dif­fer­ent tasks. Some pro­teins, called enzymes, cata­lyze chem­ic­al reac­tions by lower­ing their activ­a­tion energy. In con­trast to chem­ic­al cata­lys­is, some enzymes are ste­reo-spe­cif­ic and, hence, allow the evol­u­tion of only one ste­reoi­so­mer­ic bond out of two or more pos­sible bonds. From this reac­tion, only one pos­sible product con­fig­ur­a­tion is estab­lished, which is entirely bio­de­grad­able, and which does not pro­duce byproducts. Through this pro­cess, less resources are required for the puri­fic­a­tion of the products and dis­pos­al of enzymes, lead­ing to a decreased envir­on­ment­al impact. Not only is the envir­on­ment­al impact lowered, but biocon­ver­sion is often more effi­cient and more cost-effect­ive, com­pared to chem­ic­al pro­ced­ures. In addi­tion, a great num­ber of enzymes is already bed down in indus­tri­al applications.