Industrial Enzyme Technology: Potential Applications

Introduction

History of enzyme technology dated back to 1874 began when Christian Hansen, a Danish Chemist extracted dried calves' stomachs with saline solution to produce rennet which was the first enzyme used for industrial purposes. French scientist, Louis Pasteur in 18^th century discovered the fermentative activity of microorganisms. There were several experiments conducted by Eduard Buchner in 1897 at the University of Berlin, to study the ability of yeast extracts to ferment sugar and he found out that the sugar was fermented even when there were no living yeast cells in the mixture and the enzyme was named “zymase”. Enzymes were used in 1930 in fruit juice clarification/manufacturing. Early 1960s starch industries witnessed a great advancement with the usage of alpha-amylases and glucoamylases which completely replaced traditional acid hydrolysis of starch.

Enzyme technology is a section of the biochemical science that is going through a stage of ontogenesis and significance recognitions in global industrialization. Biotechnology can be defined as the application of biological agents using scientific and engineering principles to the processing of materials to provide goods and services for human. It has a large impact and offers the potential for new industrial processes that are based on renewable raw materials and require less energy (Hamlyn, 1997). In industrial and analytical fields, biotechnology is currently considered as a useful alternative to process technology. Several advantages over chemical catalysts under mild environmental conditions with efficiency and high specificity have been accrued to this fact. Such include ingredient substitution through continuous fermentation, increased products yields and plant capacity, processing aid substitution, more efficient processing, less undesirable products with improved products (Souze, 1980). Biotechnology utilizes a wide range of enzymes produced on a commercial scale employing supposedly screened microorganisms. Such microorganisms have been characterized and optimized to synthesis a high-quality enzyme on large scales for industrial applications. Molecular biology techniques have allowed us to tailor a particular microorganism to produce enzyme with desired characteristics such as tolerance at high temperature and its stability in acidic or alkaline environment, thermostability, and high yields of an enzyme, but also retaining the enzyme activity under critical reaction conditions such as in presence of other metallic ions or compounds. However, the use of enzymes in industrial applications has been limited by several factors, mainly their instability, high cost of the enzymes, solubility in aqueous substrate and difficulty in recovery from bioreactor effluents. There have been several intense researches in the field of enzyme technology that has facilitated their practical applications (Mahmoud & Helmy, 2009). The main objective of this chapter is to extensively explore the great values of starch hydrolyzing enzymes as prospective tool for the many biotechnological opportunities they offer in pharmaceutical industry.