Li Yin, Wei Gongyuan, Chen Jian
The Key Laboratory of Industrial Biotechnology, Ministry of Education; School of Biotechnology, Southern Yangtze University, 170 Huihe Road, Wuxi, 214036, People's Republic of China.
Appl Microbiol Biotechnol. 2004 Dec;66(3):233-42. doi: 10.1007/s00253-004-1751-y.
This Mini-Review summarizes the historic developments and technological achievements in the biotechnological production of glutathione in the past 30 years. Glutathione is the most abundant non-protein thiol compound present in living organisms. It is used as a pharmaceutical compound and can be used in food additives and the cosmetic industries. Glutathione can be produced using enzymatic methods in the presence of ATP and its three precursor amino acids (L-glutamic acid, L-cysteine, glycine). Alternatively, glutathione can be produced by direct fermentative methods using sugar as a starting material. In the latter method, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida utilis are currently used to produce glutathione on an industrial scale. At the molecular level, the genes gshA and gshB, which encode the enzymes gamma-glutamylcysteine synthetase and glutathione synthetase, respectively, have been cloned from Escherichia coli and over-expressed in E. coli, S. cerevisiae, and Lactococcus lactis. It is anticipated that, with the design and/or discovery of novel producers, the biotechnological production of glutathione will be further improved to expand the application range of this physiologically and medically important tripeptide.
本综述总结了过去30年中谷胱甘肽生物技术生产的历史发展和技术成就。谷胱甘肽是生物体内最丰富的非蛋白质硫醇化合物。它被用作药物化合物，也可用于食品添加剂和化妆品行业。谷胱甘肽可以在ATP及其三种前体氨基酸（L-谷氨酸、L-半胱氨酸、甘氨酸）存在的情况下通过酶法生产。或者，谷胱甘肽可以以糖为起始原料通过直接发酵法生产。在后一种方法中，酿酒酵母和产朊假丝酵母目前被用于工业规模生产谷胱甘肽。在分子水平上，分别编码γ-谷氨酰半胱氨酸合成酶和谷胱甘肽合成酶的基因gshA和gshB已从大肠杆菌中克隆出来，并在大肠杆菌、酿酒酵母和乳酸乳球菌中过表达。预计，随着新型生产者的设计和/或发现，谷胱甘肽的生物技术生产将得到进一步改进，以扩大这种具有生理和医学重要性的三肽的应用范围。
