Protease-catalyzed dipeptide synthesis from N-protected amino acid carbamoylmethyl esters and free amino acids in frozen aqueous solutions

Ficin-copper hybrid nanoflowers with enhanced peroxidase-like activity for colorimetric detection of biothiols

The proteolytic enzyme ficin exhibits peroxidase-like activity but it is low and insufficient for real applications. Herein, we developed ficin-copper hybrid nanoflowers and demonstrated that they have significantly enhanced peroxidase-like activity of over 6-fold higher than that of free ficin, with one of the lowest Km and highest kcat values among all reported ficin-based peroxidase-like nanozymes. This was most likely caused by the synergistic catalysis of co-existing ficin and crystalline copper phosphate within nanoflower matrices having a large surface area. The nanoflowers were easily prepared by incubating ficin and copper sulfate at ambient temperature, causing coordination interactions between ficin's amine/amide moieties and copper ions, followed by concomitant anisotropic growth of petals composed of copper phosphate crystals with ficin. When compared to free ficin and natural horseradish peroxidase, the resulting nanoflowers' affinity toward H2O2 was greatly increased, yielding Km values of half and one-tenth, respectively, as well as noticeably improved stability. The nanoflowers were then applied to colorimetric determination of biological thiols (biothiols), such as cysteine (Cys), glutathione (GSH), and homocysteine (Hcy), based on their inhibition of nanoflowers' peroxidase-like activity, producing reduced color intensities as the concentration of biothiols increased. This strategy achieved highly sensitive colorimetric determinations of Cys, GSH, and Hcy after only 25-min incubation. Additionally, using this technique, biothiols in human serum were successfully determined with excellent precision, suggesting the potential application of this technology in clinical settings, particularly in point-of-care testing environments.

Strategy for the Biosynthesis of Short Oligopeptides: Green and Sustainable Chemistry

Short oligopeptides are some of the most promising and functionally important amide bond-containing components, with widespread applications. Biosynthesis of these oligopeptides may potentially become the ultimate strategy because it has better cost efficiency and environmental-friendliness than conventional solid phase peptide synthesis and chemo-enzymatic synthesis. To successfully apply this strategy for the biosynthesis of structurally diverse amide bond-containing components, the identification and selection of specific biocatalysts is extremely important. Given that perspective, this review focuses on the current knowledge about the typical enzymes that might be potentially used for the synthesis of short oligopeptides. Moreover, novel enzymatic methods of producing desired peptides via metabolic engineering are highlighted. It is believed that this review will be helpful for technological innovation in the production of desired peptides.

A green-by-design bioprocess forl-carnosine production integrating enzymatic synthesis with membrane separation

This simple and clean bioprocess enables the economically attractive and environmentally benign production of the bioactive dipeptidel-Car.

Recent advances in chemoenzymatic peptide syntheses

Chemoenzymatic peptide synthesis is the hydrolase-catalyzed stereoselective formation of peptide bonds. It is a clean and mild procedure, unlike conventional chemical synthesis, which involves complicated and laborious protection-deprotection procedures and harsh reaction conditions. The chemoenzymatic approach has been utilized for several decades because determining the optimal conditions for conventional synthesis is often time-consuming. The synthesis of poly- and oligopeptides comprising various amino acids longer than a dipeptide continues to pose a challenge owing to the lack of knowledge about enzymatic mechanisms and owing to difficulty in optimizing the pH, temperature, and other reaction conditions. These drawbacks limit the applications of the chemoenzymatic approach. Recently, a variety of enzymes and substrates produced using recombinant techniques, substrate mimetics, and optimal reaction conditions (e.g., frozen aqueous media and ionic liquids) have broadened the scope of chemoenzymatic peptide syntheses. In this review, we highlight the recent advances in the chemoenzymatic syntheses of various peptides and their use in developing new materials and biomedical applications.

Papain-specific activating esters in aqueous dipeptide synthesis

Enzymatic peptide synthesis has the potential to be a viable alternative for chemical peptide synthesis. Because of the increasing commercial interest in peptides, new and improved enzymatic synthesis methods are desirable. In recently developed enzymatic strategies such as substrate mimetic approaches and enzyme-specific activation, use of the guanidinophenyl ester (OGp) group has been shown to suffer from some drawbacks. OGp esters are sensitive to spontaneous chemical hydrolysis and the group is expensive to synthesize and therefore not suitable for large-scale applications. On the basis of earlier computational studies, we hypothesized that OGp might be replaceable by simpler ester groups to make the enzyme-specific activation approach to peptide bond formation more accessible. To this end, a set of potential activating esters (Z-Gly-Act) was designed, synthesized, and evaluated. Both the benzyl (OBn) and the dimethylaminophenyl (ODmap) esters gave promising results. For these esters, the scope of a model dipeptide synthesis reaction under aqueous conditions was investigated by varying the amino acid donor. The results were compared with those obtained from a previous study of Z-X(AA) -OGp esters. Computational docking analysis of the set of esters was performed in order to provide insight into the differences in the reactivities of all the potential activating esters. Finally, selected ODmap- and OBn-activated amino acids were applied in the synthesis of two biologically active dipeptides on preparative scales.

Simple enzymatic procedure for L-carnosine synthesis: whole-cell biocatalysis and efficient biocatalyst recycling

β-Peptides and their derivates are usually stable to proteolysis and have an increased half-life compared with α-peptides. Recently, β-aminopeptidases were described as a new enzyme class that enabled the enzymatic degradation and formation of β-peptides. As an alternative to the existing chemical synthesis routes, the aim of the present work was to develop a whole-cell biocatalyst for the synthesis and production of β-peptides using this enzymatic activity. For the optimization of the reaction system we chose the commercially relevant β,α-dipeptide L-carnosine (β-alanine-L-histidine) as model product. We were able to show that different recombinant yeast and bacteria strains, which overexpress a β-peptidase, could be used directly as whole-cell biocatalysts for the synthesis of L-carnosine. By optimizing relevant reaction conditions for the best-performing recombinant Escherichia coli strain, such as pH and substrate concentrations, we obtained high l-carnosine yields of up to 71%. Long-time as well as biocatalyst recycling experiments indicated a high stability of the developed biocatalyst for at least five repeated batches. Application of the recombinant E. coli in a fed-batch process enabled the accumulation of l-carnosine to a concentration of 3.7 g l(-1).