Industrial Enzymes - Present status and future perspectives for India

Abstract

Enzyme technology is a well established branch of the biochemical science which is going through a phase of maturation as well as evolution. The maturation is shown by the development of the theory, their function and through the formation and configuration of their three-dimension structure, in this era of global industrialization. A better understanding enzymes and their functional significance suggests many novel applications for these catalytic activities and for continual discovery with novel properties by R&D. They are being used on an industrial and research scale for the variety of reactions catalyzed with environmental conditions. This is just the start of the industrial enzyme era which is preparing itself to put known enzymes to novel uses and novel enzymes, discovered or tailored, to catalyze unexploited reactions. As the demand is for cleaner and greener technology to preserve our mother earth for our descendant, the use of enzymes that can replace harmful chemical reactions are extremely importance and most of the current R&D on enzymes is directed towards this issue. Similarly use of enzymes in extreme harsh conditions such as high and low temperatures and pH are also more prevalent. Hence the evaluation of present R&D directions on industrial enzymes seems to be important and this paper assesses the status of industrial enzyme research globally as well as in Indian context with use in various industries, it application, the present status of R&D and commercialization. Since enzymes are now widely used in biotransformation and considering the importance of enzymes in the synthesis of chiral molecules of pharmaceutical importance, a separate section on enzymes involved in biotransformation are also reviewed in detail. This study is based on the search from scientific databases such as SciVerse Scopus, Google, other web sources, etc