Carbamoylases: characteristics and applications in biotechnological processes.
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.
Martínez-Rodríguez
Sergio
S
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
Martínez-Gómez
Ana Isabel
AI
Rodríguez-Vico
Felipe
F
Clemente-Jiménez
Josefa María
JM
Las Heras-Vázquez
Francisco Javier
FJ
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
D000596:Amino Acids; D000581:Amidohydrolases; C080477:N-carbamoyl-D-amino acid amidohydrolase; C104561:N-carbamoyl-L-amino-acid hydrolase