[ad_1]
October 22 (UPI) – Australian scientists have successfully catalyzed chemical reactions using the replica of an enzyme 450 million years old.
The new research, detailed in the journal Nature Catalysts, showed that old enzymes could survive high temperatures and could be used to develop new drugs, food additives, biofuels, and so on.
"We investigated the possibility of using a biological agent, such as enzymes, to accelerate chemical reactions, as an alternative to current commercial processes," said Elizabeth Gillam, professor of molecular chemistry at the University Queensland, in a press release. "It is often very difficult to make precise changes to complex chemicals, but this is essential in many sectors, with the pharmaceutical sector being a prime example."
Popular methods to accelerate or catalyze chemical reactions that create new chemicals are often imprecise and produce harmful byproducts.
New research has determined that old enzymes that survive high temperatures are faster, more efficient and use less energy. They also produce fewer toxic byproducts.
"Natural enzymes do not survive long enough to make this alternative competitive – so we invented a hack," said Gillam.
To replicate an ancient enzyme, scientists used genetic analysis to trace the evolutionary history of a group of Precambrian enzymes that thrived when temperatures on Earth reached about 60 degrees Celsius.
On the basis of their analysis, the scientists estimated the genetic code of the group's common ancestor. The researcher inserted this code into a bacterium to test the properties of the old enzyme replica.
"Heat-stable proteins can be imagined using only sequence data from even recent ancestors," researchers wrote.
Laboratory tests proved that the enzyme was able to survive high temperatures. At room temperature, the replica lasted 100 times longer than natural, natural enzymes.
"It means more for our money in a commercial process, but also improves environmental sustainability and broadens our understanding and use of enzymes in synthetic biology," Gillam said. "The scale of commercial applications is limited only by the imagination.For example, this discovery could advance areas such as gene therapy or help clean up polluted environments – there remains a lot of work to do."
[ad_2]
Source link
