Arnold L Demain - Böcker

Biotechnology of Microbial Enzymes: Production, Biocatalysis and Industrial Applications provides a complete survey of the latest innovations on microbial enzymes, highlighting biotechnological advances in their production and purification along with information on successful applications as biocatalysts in several chemical and industrial processes under mild and green conditions.

Applications of microbial enzymes in food, feed, and pharmaceutical industries are given particular emphasis. The application of recombinant DNA technology within industrial fermentation and the production of enzymes over the last 20 years have produced a host of useful chemical and biochemical substances. The power of these technologies results in novel transformations, better enzymes, a wide variety of applications, and the unprecedented development of biocatalysts through the ongoing integration of molecular biology methodology, all of which is covered insightfully and in-depth within the book.

Features research on microbial enzymes from basic science through application in multiple industry sectors for a comprehensive approach Includes information on metabolic pathway engineering, metagenomic screening, microbial genomes, extremophiles, rational design, directed evolution, and more Provides a holistic approach to the research of microbial enzymes

Protein hydrolysates, otherwise commonly known as peptones or peptides, are used in a wide variety of products in fermentation and biotechnology industries.

A fresh examination of the past successes of natural products as medicines and their new future from both conventional and new technologies. High-performance liquid chromatography profiling, combinatorial synthesis, genomics, proteomics, DNA shuffling, bioinformatics, and genetic manipulation all now make it possible to rapidly evaluate the activities of extracts as well as purified components derived from microbes, plants, and marine organisms. The authors apply these methods to new natural product drug discoveries, to microbial diversity, to specific groups of products (Chinese herbal drugs, antitumor drugs from microbes and plants, terpenoids, and arsenic compounds), and to specific sources (the sea, rainforest, and endophytes). These new opportunities show how research and development trends in the pharmaceutical industry can advance to include both synthetic compounds and natural products, and how this paradigm shift can be more productive and efficacious.

A fresh examination of the past successes of natural products as medicines and their new future from both conventional and new technologies.

It is quite amazing that the oldest group of medically useful antibiotics, the p-Iactams, are still providing basic microbiologists, biochemists, and clinicians with surprises over 50 years after Fleming's discovery of penicillin production by Penicillium. By the end of the 1950s, the future of the penicillins seemed doubtful as resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus began to increase in hospital populations. However, the development of semisynthetic penicillins provided new structures with resistance to penicillinase and with broad-spectrum activity. In the 1960s, the discovery of cephalosporin C production by Cephalosporium and its conversion to valuable broad-spectrum antibiotics by semisynthetic means excited the world of chemotherapy. In the early 1970s, the 40-year-old notion that p-lactams were produced only by fungi was destroyed by the discovery of cephamycin production by Streptomyces. Again this basic discovery was exploited by the development of the semisynthetic cefoxitin, which has even broader activity than earlier p-lactams.Later in the 1970 s came the discoveries of nocardicins from Nocardia, clavulanic acid from Streptomyces, and the carbapenems from Streptomyces. Now in the 1980s we learn that p-lactams are produced even by unicellular bacteria and that semisynthetic derivatives of these monobactams may find their way into medicine. Indeed, the future of the prolific p-lactam family seems brighter with each passing decade.