Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering ETH Zürich, Mattenstrasse 26, 4058, Basel, Switzerland.
Chembiochem. 2020 Aug 17;21(16):2241-2249. doi: 10.1002/cbic.202000121. Epub 2020 May 8.
Enzyme engineering has made impressive progress in the past decades, paving the way for the widespread use of enzymes for various purposes. In contrast to "classical" enzyme engineering, which focuses on optimizing specific properties of natural enzymes, a more recent trend towards the creation of artificial enzymes that catalyze fundamentally distinct, new-to-nature reactions is observable. While approaches for creating such enzymes differ significantly, they share the common goal of enabling biocatalytic novelty to broaden the range of applications for enzymes. Although most artificial enzymes reported to date are only moderately active and barely function in vivo, they have the potential to endow cells with capabilities that were previously out of reach and thus herald a new wave of "functional xenobiology". Herein, we highlight recent developments in the field of artificial enzymes with a particular focus on challenges and opportunities for their use in xenobiology.
酶工程在过去几十年中取得了令人瞩目的进展，为酶在各种用途中的广泛应用铺平了道路。与专注于优化天然酶特定性质的“经典”酶工程相比，人们越来越倾向于创造人工酶，这些酶可以催化从根本上不同的、自然界中没有的新反应。虽然创造这些酶的方法有很大的不同，但它们都有一个共同的目标，即通过生物催化的新颖性来拓宽酶的应用范围。尽管迄今为止报道的大多数人工酶的活性都只是中等水平，并且在体内几乎无法发挥作用，但它们有可能赋予细胞以前无法企及的能力，从而开启“功能异源生物学”的新浪潮。本文重点介绍了人工酶领域的最新进展，特别关注了它们在异源生物学中的应用所面临的挑战和机遇。
