Journal of Biological and Food Science Research

Volume 1 Issue 1, Pages 1-14

©2012 Online Research Journals

Available Online at http://www.onlineresearchjournals.org/JBFSR

Review Paper

 

Microbial biotransformation: Pharmaceutical peptides   Komal M. Raval, Pooja S. Vaswani and Devipriya R. Majumder*   Department of Microbiology, Abeda Inamdar Senior College, Azam Campus, Pune-411001, India.   *Corresponding Author Email: devipriyamajumder@gmail.com; Phone No: 020-26446970/(R) 26856542.   Downloaded 24 January, 2012 Accepted 14 March, 2012

Since the beginning of civilization, the therapeutics for man and animals were exclusively natural products in different forms. Chemical synthesis was in vogue for little more than a century for production of drugs. The first industrial production of penicillin in 1941/42 paved the way for the preparation of drugs by exploitation of the multifaceted biosynthetic capabilities of microorganisms to produce antibiotics or more recently other pharmacologically active substances. The specificity of individual enzymatic transformation stages in biotransformation of steroids in 1950 expanded the field of biotechnological production of pharmaceuticals. The growing knowledge of microorganisms as biocatalysts as source of valuable enzymes and the development of new economical, technical procedures raised the number and volume of drugs prepared by microbial biosynthesis and biotransformation. Enzymatic synthesis of peptides has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. They are of paramount importance in the field of health care. The proteases from microbial sources have been successfully exploited for the synthesis of several small peptides. Applications of enzyme catalysis in peptide synthesis are reviewed. A brief history of the development of these techniques is presented. Existing strategies and tactics of regio- and stereospecific peptide bond synthesis catalyzed by proteolytic enzymes are summarized. The literature (ca. 1966–2011) is surveyed for selected applications of enzyme catalysis for the synthesis of bioactive peptides. The aim of this study was to review the basic techniques of peptide synthesis and some advancement in biotechnological methods for their production.   Keywords: Biocatalysis, microbial protease, peptide synthesis, pharmaceutical peptides, biotransformation, biocatalytic processes.