title: Carbamoylases: characteristics and applications in biotechnological processes.
abstract: Enzymatic kinetic resolution is a widely used biotechnological tool for the production of enantiomerically pure/enriched compounds. This technique takes advantage of the enantioselectivity or enantiospecificity of an enzyme for one of the enantiomers of a racemic substrate to isolate the desired isomer. N-Carbamoyl-D- and L-amino acid amidohydrolases (D- and L-carbamoylases) are model enzymes for this procedure due to their strict enantiospecificity. Carbamoylase-based kinetic resolution of amino acids has been applied for the last three decades, allowing the production of optically pure D- or L-amino acids. Furthermore, this enzyme has become crucial in the industrially used multienzymatic system known as "Hydantoinase Process," where the kinetic resolution produced by coupling an enantioselective hydantoinase and the enantiospecific carbamoylase is enhanced by the enzymatic/chemical dynamic kinetic resolution of the low-rate hydrolyzed substrate. This review outlines the properties of D- and L-carbamoylases, emphasizing their biochemical/structural characteristics and their biotechnological applications. It also pinpoints new applications for the exploitation of carbamoylases over the forthcoming years.
authors.affiliation: Departamento Química Física, Bioquímica y Química Inorgánica, Universidad de Almería, Edificio CITE I, Carretera de Sacramento s/n, La Cañada de San Urbano, Almería, Spain. srodrig@ual.es
authors.forename: Sergio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Martínez-Rodríguez
authors.forename: Ana Isabel
authors.initials: AI
authors.lastname: Martínez-Gómez
authors.forename: Felipe
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Rodríguez-Vico
authors.forename: Josefa María
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Clemente-Jiménez
authors.forename: Francisco Javier
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: Las Heras-Vázquez
mesh_terms: D000581:Amidohydrolases / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000596:Amino Acids / Q000378:metabolism*; D001709:Biotechnology / Q000379:methods; D007700:Kinetics; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary; D017385:Sequence Homology; D013237:Stereoisomerism; D013379:Substrate Specificity
chemical_list: D000596:Amino Acids; D000581:Amidohydrolases; C080477:N-carbamoyl-D-amino acid amidohydrolase; C104561:N-carbamoyl-L-amino-acid hydrolase