Enzymes in Industry - Essay Example

It is the aim of this paper to discuss the workings and history of enzymes and to trace its research as well as to give an overview of how enzymes have been incorporated into various facets of industry and as a result make our day- to - day lives much easier. Enzymes are proteinaceous molecules. They catalyze a variety of reactions in the cell and every living organism is dependent on them to function. Being proteins, they are sensitive to the working conditions, like temperature, pH, etc. and often have stringent requirements of these factors in order to function properly.

Each enzyme catalyses a specific reaction, and this specificity is one of the hallmarks of an enzyme. In addition, each enzyme also has certain conditions within which it will be active. The conditions vary from enzyme to enzyme, though there is generally a common overlap amongst them. However, some proteins will be more stable than others under condition x than others, or will have a wider range of toleration to circumstances. Enzymes in industry have their roots in the earliest civilizations.

Fermentation of grapes to make wine is one of the earliest recorded uses of enzymes. Also recorded is the fermentation of milk to yield cheese and yoghurt. However, though they have been recorded, the significance of the process of fermentation was not looked deeply into for many centuries. People slowly became aware of yeast as a source of this fermenting activity. However it was not until the beginning of the 19th century that enzyme research as a field really took off. The history of enzyme research is given below.

History Timeline1810 - Joseph Gay Lussac discovers that the principle products of sugar decomposition in yeast are ethanol and carbon dioxide.1835 - Jacob Berzelius postulates the first general theory of chemical catalysis by showing that malt extracts (diastase) were capable of better catalysis of starch hydrolysis than sulfuric acid.Mid 19th century - Pasteur proposes that fermentation can only occur in living cells; he assumes a "vital force" that is capable of this process and says that dead cells cannot catalyse fermentation. J. Liebig opposes this theory, postulating that biological reactions are caused by substances called 'ferments' which are themselves not living organisms.

1864 - Hansen extracts chymosin from calf stomach (rennet) and uses it to ripen and manufacture cheese. This appears to be the first industrial use.1876 - William Kuhne coins the term "enzyme" in an attempt to emphasize that it is not the yeast but something within its cell that causes fermentation.Late 1800s - Jokichi Takamine is the first person to isolate an enzyme, Takadiastase, from a microbe, Aspergillus oryzae1894 - Emil Fischer discovers that glycolytic enzymes can distinguish between stereoisomeric sugars leading to the lock- and - key hypothesis.

1897 - Eduard Buchner ends the debate on what causes fermentation by showing that a cell-free yeast extract is still capable of carrying out fermentation.1917 - Bacterial amylase is used by Boiden and Effront to perform textile desizing.Pre- W.W.I - Otto Rohm uses pancreatic extracts to bate leather. He also later used enzymes in detergents.1926 - James Sumner crystallizes the enzyme jack bean urease, demonstrating conclusively that enzymes are proteins.Mid- 1930s - John Northrop, Moses Kunitz confirm the proteinaceous nature of enzymes by showing a direct correlation