Complex Formation Between Chymotrypsin and Ethyl Cellulose as a Means to Solubilize the Enzyme in Active Form in Toluene

How do additives affect enzyme activity and stability in nonaqueous media?

The catalytic activities of lyophilized powders of alpha-chymotrypsin and Candida antarctica lipase were found to increase 4- to 8-fold with increasing amounts of either buffer salts or potassium chloride in the enzyme preparation. Increasing amounts of sorbitol in the chymotrypsin preparation produced a modest increase in activity. The additives are basically thought to serve as immobilization matrices, the sorbitol being inferior because of its poor mechanical properties. Besides their role as supports, the buffer species were indispensable for the transesterification activity of chymotrypsin because they prevented perturbations of the pH during the course of the reaction. Hence, increasing amounts of buffer species yielded a 100-fold increase in transesterification activity. Effects of pH changes were not as predominant in the peptide synthesis and the lipase-catalyzed reactions. Immobilization of the protease on celite resulted in a remarkable improvement of transesterification activity as compared to the suspended protease, even in the absence of buffer species. Immobilization of the lipase caused a small improvement of activity. The activity of the immobilized enzymes was further enhanced 3-4 times by including increasing amounts of buffer salts in the preparation.The inclusion of increasing amounts of sodium phosphate or sorbitol to chymotrypsin rendered the catalyst more labile against thermal inactivation. The denaturation temperature decreased with 7 degrees C at the highest content of sodium phosphate, as compared to the temperature obtained for the denaturation of the pure protein. The apparent enthalpy of denaturation increased with increasing contents of the additives. The enhancement of hydration level and flexibility of the macromolecule upon addition of the compounds partly provides the explanation for the observed results.

Molecular details of ovalbumin-pectin complexes at the air/water interface: a spectroscopic study

To stabilize air-water interfaces, as in foams, the adsorption of surface-active components is a prerequisite. An approach to controlling the surface activity of proteins is noncovalent complex formation with a polyelectrolyte in the bulk phase. The molecular properties of egg white ovalbumin in a complex with pectin in the bulk solution and at air/water interfaces were studied using drop tensiometry (ADT) and time-resolved fluorescence anisotropy techniques. The complex formation of ovalbumin with pectin in the bulk resulted in the formation of a compact structure with a different spatial arrangement depending on the protein/pectin ratio. Complex formation did not provide an altered protein structure, whereas the conformational stability was slightly increased in the complex. In excess pectin, an overall condensed complex structure is formed, whereas at limited pectin concentrations the structure of the complex is more "segmental". The characteristics of these structures did not depend on pH in the 7.0 to 4.5 regime. Interaction with pectin in the bulk solution resulted in a significantly slower adsorption of the protein to the air/water interface. The limited mobility of the protein at the interface was found for both ovalbumin and ovalbumin-pectin complexes. From both the rotational dynamics and total fluorescence properties of the protein in the absence and presence of pectin, it was suggested that the complex does not dissociate at the interface. Ovalbumin in the complex retains its initial "aqueous" microenvironment at the interface, whereas in the absence of pectin the microenvironment of the protein changed to a more nonpolar one. This work illustrates a more general property of polyelectrolytes, namely, the ability to retain a protein in its microenvironment. Insight into this property provides a new tool for better control of the surface activity of complex biopolymer systems.

Optimization of Pseudomonas cepacia lipase preparations for catalysis in organic solvents

The activity of different lipase (from Pseudomonas cepacia) forms, such as crude powder (crude PC), purified and lyophilized with PEG (PEG + PC), covalently linked to PEG (PEG-PC), cross-linked enzyme crystals (CLEC-PC), and immobilized in Sol-Gel-AK (Sol-Gel-AK-PC) was determined, at various water activities (aw), in carbon tetrachloride, benzene and 1,4-dioxane. The reaction of vinyl butyrate with 1-octanol was employed as a model and both transesterification (formation of 1-octyl butyrate) and hydrolysis (formation of butyric acid from vinyl butyrate) rates were determined. Both rates depended on the lipase form, solvent employed, and aw value. Hydrolysis rates always increased as a function of aw, while the optimum of aw for transesterification depended on the enzyme form and nature of the solvent. At proper aw, some lipase forms such as PEG + PC, PEG-PC, and Sol-Gel-AK-PC had a total activity in organic solvents (transesterification plus hydrolysis) which was close to (39 and 48%) or even higher than (130%) that displayed by the same amount of lipase protein in the hydrolysis of tributyrin-one of the substrates most commonly used as standard for the assay of lipase activity-in aqueous buffer. Instead, CLEC-PC and crude PC were much less active in organic solvents (2 and 12%) than in buffer. The results suggest that enzyme dispersion and/or proper enzyme conformation (favored by interaction with PEG or the hydrophobic Sol-Gel-AK matrix) are essential for the expression of high lipase activity in organic media.

Poly(ethylene glycol)-α-chymotrypsin complex catalytically active in anhydrous isooctane

Enzymatic catalysis in predominantly organic media has undergone rapid expansions, particularly over the past decade. There are numerous potential advantages in employing enzymes in organic media. However, there are some crucial defects in the native enzyme-catalyzed biocatalyses, such as a decrease in their reaction rate due to diffusional limitations of substrates. To overcome these defects, enzymes modified chemically with polymers and physically with surfactants, which were soluble in organic solvents, were often used. However, they had inherent drawbacks. On the other hand, the enzymes modified physically with polymers were found to be soluble and catalytically active in organic media. To date, however, the effect of the amount of added polymers on the enzyme activity has not been clarified, even though this may be an important factor governing the activity of polymer-enzyme complexes in organic media. In this study, we obtained a complex of an enzyme and a hydrophilic polymer by lyophilizing an aqueous solution containing a polymer and an enzyme. We found that the polymer-enzyme complex was catalytically active in organic media even when the molar ratio of polymer/enzyme in its preparation stage was unity, and that the activity of the polymer-enzyme complex increased with an increase in the molar ratio of polymer/enzyme, reached the maximum activity (ca. 7200-fold higher than that of the native enzyme suspended in organic media) and then gradually decreased.

Synthetic polymers as solubilizing vehicles for enzymes in water-poor media

A recent method for exposing enzymes to organic solvents is reviewed. By complex formation between the enzyme and polymers that per se are soluble in organic solvents it is possible to disperse the enzyme in the organic medium in such a way that an optically transparent (in the visible region) solution is obtained. After reaction, the separation of the enzyme from the organic medium can be obtained simply by addition of water. The enzyme can be recovered from the water phase. Physicochemical studies have revealed that the enzyme is more stable in the complex-bound form.