Inspired by natural enzymes that possess multiple catalytic activities, here we develop a bifunctional metal-organic frame-work (MOF) for biosensing applications. Ultrasmall gold nano-particles (AuNPs) are grown in the internal cavities...

An Overview on PLP-dependent Enzymes Pyridoxal 5’-phosphate (PLP), the biologically active of vitamin B6, was first identified in the mid-forties as the cofactor for the transamination reaction. Since then, PLP-dependent enzymes have been the focus of extensive biochemical research. The interest aroused by these enzymes is due to their unrivalled catalytic versatility and their widespread invol...

NAD(P)H-dependent enzymes are ubiquitous in metabolism and cellular processes and are also of great interest for pharmaceutical and industrial applications. Here, we present a structure-guided enzyme engineering strategy for improving catalytic properties of NAD(P)H-dependent enzymes toward native or native-like reactions using mutations to the enzyme's adenine-binding pocket, distal to the sit...

Natural enzymes are extremely specific and efficient biocatalysts, facilitating almost every biochemical process in living organisms with rapid rate (1019 times) of reaction [1]. Although the location and function of natural enzymes are well orchestrated, their practical utility is often compromised by some of their intrinsic hitches. These drawbacks could be the high cost of production, purifi...

Phosphoinositide-specific phospholipases C (PI-PLCs) are ubiquitous enzymes that catalyse the hydrolysis of phosphoinositides to inositol phosphates and diacylglycerol (DAG). Whereas the eukaryotic PI-PLCs play a central role in most signal transduction cascades by producing two second messengers, inositol-1,4,5-trisphosphate and DAG, prokaryotic PI-PLCs are of interest because they act as viru...

Bioscavengers are biopharmaceuticals that specifically react with toxicants. Thus, enzymes reacting with poisonous esters can be used as bioscavengers for neutralization of toxic molecules before they reach physiological targets. Parenteral administration of bioscavengers is, therefore, intended for prophylaxis or pre-treatments, emergency and post-exposure treatments of intoxications. These en...

D-amino acid aminotransferases (D-AATs) from Geobacillus toebii SK1 and Geobacillus sp. strain KLS1 were cloned and characterized from a genetic, catalytic, and structural aspect. Although the enzymes were highly thermostable, their catalytic capability was approximately one-third of that of highly active Bacilli enzymes, with respective turnover rates of 47 and 55 s(-1) at 50 degrees C. The Ge...

BACKGROUND Uracil DNA glycosylases (UDGs) are major repair enzymes that protect DNA from mutational damage caused by uracil incorporated as a result of a polymerase error or deamination of cytosine. Four distinct families of UDGs have been identified, which show very limited sequence similarity to each other, although two of them have been shown to possess the same structural fold. The structur...

Metabolic pathways are often considered "perfected" or at least predictable as substrates efficiently rearrange into products through the intervention of an optimized enzyme. Moreover, single catalytic steps link up, forming a myriad of metabolic circuits that are often modeled with a high degree of certainty. However, on closer examination, most enzymes are not precise with respect to their ac...

in this article, the immobilization of microsomal membranes on fractosil and hexadecylfractosil by hydrophobic adsorption is reported. microsomes were prepared from rat brain and thecatalytic activity of antimycin a insensitive nadh-cytochrome c reductase (nccr), one of themembrane bound enzymes in the microsomal electron transport chain, was chosen as a representative ofthe microsomal membrane...