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Dr Justin Jordaan |
The CSIR’s new enzyme solid support invention, Dendrispheres, allows
for a more stable and efficient enzyme for chemical reactions and
results in more value for research
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CSIR researchers working in the areas of synthetic biology and biocatalysis in the field of biosciences, have developed a technology that can remarkably improve enzyme activity for use in the production of pharmaceuticals as well as improve reaction rates for other scientific research purposes. The new invention, known as Dendrispheres, is said to outperform currently available enzyme immobilisation technology.
Enzymes play a vital role in speeding up chemical reactions in almost every facet of life from applications industrially and in the household to the synthesis of antibiotics for pharmaceutical purposes. This class of proteins have certain limitations; displaying instability towards temperature, pH, solvents, oxidation and shear, resulting in limited suitability or shelf life. In addition, soluble enzymes cannot be easily recovered from aqueous media or re-used. These drawbacks can be overcome by stabilising enzymes - immobilising these enzymes through attachment onto supports or cross-linking enzymes so that they support each other.
Enzymes are reportedly soft biological material and often not sufficiently robust for their intended use. These supports keep the enzymes steady as they perform the intended function and allow researchers to run some applications continuously.
"We've come up with a new solid support that has an unusually high protein binding capacity and alleviates the problem of currently available solid supports," explains Dr Justin Jordaan, who leads a group investigating molecular biomaterials as part of the synthetic biology research area at the CSIR. "The problem with current support technology is that you have a limited surface area for binding enzymes. We've manufactured a very loose polymer network that enables a high specific protein load on the polymer strands, this support offers far superior immobilisation loads than alternative commercially-available supports. This opens up a whole new aspect to protein immobilisation and enables applications where high enzyme activity is required, with the added benefits of having a solid support." Polymers are a large class of natural and synthetic materials with a variety of properties and purposes.
The advantages of using enzymes in catalytic reactions are that they provide highly selective catalysis while they also provide an environmentally-efficient alternative to many currently available chemical catalysts. The use of enzymes in catalysis potentially reduces toxic or wasteful by-products, effluent load and energy consumption.
"With a high enzyme binding coupled with the high enzyme activity maintenance we can immobilise multiple enzymes together, and get full multi-enzymatic systems to take place on these particles. This enables us to replicate what happens in biology, such as biological pathways. We cannot currently do this with commercially-available protein immobilisation technologies as they do not have the required capacity," explains Jordaan. "Another advantage of the system is our ability to add additional biological agents to our systems known as enzyme co-factors, these are required for certain enzyme reactions, a limited number of technologies are capable of achieving this. We are building on this capability as it allows us to produce novel enzymatic systems not currently achievable."
Research into molecular biomaterials involves the design and synthesis of new biologically-based materials and systems, for example proteins, nucleic acids and artificial pathways, that have predetermined properties and characteristics. Although these materials are biologically-based, engineering through synthetic biology can extend the range of materials and systems beyond that which nature has provided. Protein-based materials, for example, could include those amino acids that do not occur in natural proteins or include molecules such as protein-nucleic acid hybrids. The molecular biomaterials research group are currently developing new diagnostic and therapeutic technologies consisting of immobilised multi-enzyme complexes.
Enquiries: CSIR Communication
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