Improved subtilase variant better suited for industrial applications

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 44 KB
• Volume: 104
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0006-3592
• DOI: 10.1002/bit.22563

✦ Synopsis

Alkyl glycosides with long hydrocarbon and long carbohydrate chains are biodegradable surfactants with attractive physico-chemical properties and low toxicity. Potential application areas include pharmaceutical preparations and cosmetics. Unfortunately, they are very difficult to synthesize. Chemical synthesis involves protection/deprotection reactions in organic solvents and the yields are low.

Here, Adlercreutz and coworkers show that a cyclodextrin glycosyl transferase (CGTase) can be used to catalyze efficient synthesis of these compounds in aqueous solution. The enzyme is used to add six glucose residues in one step to an alkyl maltoside, and thereby the desired length of the carbohydrate chain is reached. Two enzymes were compared and the reaction using the Bacillus macerans enzyme was optimized with respect to substrate concentrations, pH, temperature, and reaction time. Yields up to 80% were obtained.