Practical insights on enzyme stabilization

Abstract

Enzymes are efficient catalysts designed by nature to work in physiological environments of living systems. The best operational conditions to access and convert substrates at the industrial level are different from nature and normally extreme. Strategies to isolate enzymes from extremophiles can redefine new operational conditions, however not always solving all industrial requirements. The stability of enzymes is therefore a key issue on the implementation of the catalysts in industrial processes which require the use of extreme environments that can undergo enzyme instability. Strategies for enzyme stabilization have been exhaustively reviewed, however they lack a practical approach. This review intends to compile and describe the most used approaches for enzyme stabilization highlighting case studies in a practical point of view.

Keywords:

• Stabilization
• enzymes
• formulation
• molecular interactions
• industrial catalysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to thank Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2013 unit and COMPETE 2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006684) and BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004) funded by European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020 – Programa Operacional Regional do Norte. They would like also to thank the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT1135). This study was also supported by Chinese Government Scholarship under China Scholarship Council (No. 201606790036) and Chinese Foundation Key projects of governmental cooperation in International Scientific and Technological Innovation (No. 2016 YFE0115700).