Engineering of Thermomyces lanuginosus lipase Lip: creation of novel biocatalyst for efficient biosynthesis of chiral intermediate of Pregabalin

Entrapment of Phenylalanine Ammonia-Lyase in Nanofibrous Polylactic Acid Matrices by Emulsion Electrospinning

Immobilization of the recombinant, plant-derived Petroselinum crispum phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PcPAL) in electrospun matrices have the potential to create promising, easy-to-use biocatalysts. Polylactic acid (PLA) a biologically inert, commercial biopolymer, was chosen as the material of the carrier system. PLA could be electrospun properly only from water-immiscible organic solvents, which limits its application as a carrier of sensitive biological objects. The emulsion electrospinning is a proper solution to overcome this issue using non-ionic emulsifiers with different hydrophilic-lipophilic balance (HLB) values. The stabilized emulsion could protect the sensitive PcPAL dissolved in the aqueous buffer phase and improve fiber formation, plus help to keep the biocatalytic activity of enzymes. In this study, the first approach is described to produce PLA nanofibers containing PcPAL enzymes by emulsion electrospinning and to use the resulted biocatalyst in the ammonia elimination reaction from l-phenylalanine.

Cell Surface Display of Thermomyces lanuginosus Lipase in Pichia pastoris

A cell surface displayed system in Pichia pastoris GS115 was developed by using GCW61, a glycosylphosphatidylinositol-modified cell wall protein from P. pastoris, as the anchor protein. Thermomyces lanuginosus lipase (TLL) was successfully displayed on the P. pastoris cell wall by fusing GCW61 gene with TLL2 gene (NCBI Accession: O59952) that was optimized with codon bias and synthesized. Cell surface displayed TLL2 was confirmed by the immunofluorescence microscopy. Flask fermentation was performed for 144 h with lipase activity up to 1964.76 U/g. Enzymatic properties of cell surface displayed TLL2 were also investigated. Displayed TLL2 occurred the maximum activity at pH 9 and 55°C and demonstrated characteristics of wide thermal adaptability and alkaline pH resistance. The optimum substrate was p-nitrophenyl hexanoate. Bivalent metal ions Ca²⁺, Mn²⁺, and Zn²⁺ had the activation effect on displayed TLL2, while Cu²⁺, Fe²⁺, Fe³⁺, K⁺, Li⁺, Na⁺, and Co²⁺ ions had the inhibitory effect on it. Since cell surface displayed TLL2 required less purification steps compared with free enzyme and showed high enzyme activities, it would be able to be further applied in various potential applications.

Advances in Recombinant Lipases: Production, Engineering, Immobilization and Application in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Lipases are one of the most used enzymes in the pharmaceutical industry due to their efficiency in organic syntheses, mainly in the production of enantiopure drugs. From an industrial viewpoint, the selection of an efficient expression system and host for recombinant lipase production is highly important. The most used hosts are Escherichia coli and Komagataella phaffii (previously known as Pichia pastoris) and less often reported Bacillus and Aspergillus strains. The use of efficient expression systems to overproduce homologous or heterologous lipases often require the use of strong promoters and the co-expression of chaperones. Protein engineering techniques, including rational design and directed evolution, are the most reported strategies for improving lipase characteristics. Additionally, lipases can be immobilized in different supports that enable improved properties and enzyme reuse. Here, we review approaches for strain and protein engineering, immobilization and the application of lipases in the pharmaceutical industry.

Main Structural Targets for Engineering Lipase Substrate Specificity

Microbial lipases represent one of the most important groups of biotechnological biocatalysts. However, the high-level production of lipases requires an understanding of the molecular mechanisms of gene expression, folding, and secretion processes. Stable, selective, and productive lipase is essential for modern chemical industries, as most lipases cannot work in different process conditions. However, the screening and isolation of a new lipase with desired and specific properties would be time consuming, and costly, so researchers typically modify an available lipase with a certain potential for minimizing cost. Improving enzyme properties is associated with altering the enzymatic structure by changing one or several amino acids in the protein sequence. This review detailed the main sources, classification, structural properties, and mutagenic approaches, such as rational design (site direct mutagenesis, iterative saturation mutagenesis) and direct evolution (error prone PCR, DNA shuffling), for achieving modification goals. Here, both techniques were reviewed, with different results for lipase engineering, with a particular focus on improving or changing lipase specificity. Changing the amino acid sequences of the binding pocket or lid region of the lipase led to remarkable enzyme substrate specificity and enantioselectivity improvement. Site-directed mutagenesis is one of the appropriate methods to alter the enzyme sequence, as compared to random mutagenesis, such as error-prone PCR. This contribution has summarized and evaluated several experimental studies on modifying the substrate specificity of lipases.

Efficient Biocatalytic Synthesis of Chiral Intermediate of Pregabalin Using Immobilized Talaromyces thermophilus Lipase

A mutant L206F/P207F/L259F of Talaromyces thermophilus lipase (TTL) exhibited high hydrolytic activity towards 2-carboxyethyl-3-cyano-5-methylhexanoic acid ethyl ester (CNDE) for synthesis of (S)-2-carboxyethyl-3-cyano-5-methylhexanoic acid (S-CCMA), a key chiral intermediate of pregabalin. However, low conversion at high CNDE concentration and unreusability of the free TTL mutant restricted its industrial applications. In this study, the TTL mutant was immobilized onto epoxy resin and its catalytic properties for kinetic resolution of CNDE were investigated. Under the optimized conditions, the immobilized lipase exhibited an increased catalytic efficiency even at a CNDE concentration of 3 M with 49.7% conversion and 95% ee _p. The conversion retained higher than 46.3% even after 10 times repeated use of the immobilized lipase in n-heptane-water biphasic system. These results demonstrated great potential of the immobilized TTL mutant for industrial production of the chiral intermediate of pregabalin.

Directed evolution of Thermomyces lanuginosus lipase to enhance methanol tolerance for efficient production of biodiesel from waste grease

Engineering a methanol tolerant lipase is of great importance in biodiesel production. Here, the first semi-rational method for directed enzyme evolution to enhance methanol tolerance by targeting high B-factor residues for iterative saturation mutagenesis (ISM) is reported. The best double mutant, TLL-S105C/D27R, retained 71% of its original activity after incubation in methanol, showing 30% greater methanol tolerance than TLL. TLL-S105C/D27R also displayed 27% higher activity over TLL. Structure modelling suggested that the increased stability of TLL-S105C/D27R was caused by the formation of a new hydrogen bond which stabilized the protein structure. E. coli (TLL-S105C/D27R)-catalyzed biotransformation of waste grease produced biodiesel in 81% yield in 8h, showing improvement over the 67% yield for E. coli (TLL), while retaining 92% productivity after 4 cycles of biotransformation of waste grease. The engineered TLL mutant shows high potential for commercial biodiesel production.

Efficient production of (R)-3-TBDMSO glutaric acid methyl monoester by manipulating the substrate pocket of Pseudozyma antarctica lipase B

Efficient production of optically pure (R)-3-substituted glutaric acid methyl monoesters, the multifunctional chiral building blocks used in the pharmaceutical industry, by manipulating the substrate pocket of Pseudozyma antarctica lipase B.

Recent Advances in Lipase-Mediated Preparation of Pharmaceuticals and Their Intermediates

Biocatalysis offers an alternative approach to conventional chemical processes for the production of single-isomer chiral drugs. Lipases are one of the most used enzymes in the synthesis of enantiomerically pure intermediates. The use of this type of enzyme is mainly due to the characteristics of their regio-, chemo- and enantioselectivity in the resolution process of racemates, without the use of cofactors. Moreover, this class of enzymes has generally excellent stability in the presence of organic solvents, facilitating the solubility of the organic substrate to be modified. Further improvements and new applications have been achieved in the syntheses of biologically active compounds catalyzed by lipases. This review critically reports and discusses examples from recent literature (2007 to mid-2015), concerning the synthesis of enantiomerically pure active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and their intermediates in which the key step involves the action of a lipase.