Lipases and Phospholipases in Biocatalysis

Dear Colleagues,

Lipases and phospholipases are ubiquitous enzymes in most living organisms, including animals, plants, yeasts, fungi, and bacteria. After proteases and carbohydrases, lipases represent the third most commercialized enzymes, constituting more than one-fifth of the global enzyme market. These environmentally friendly enzymes catalyze hydrolysis of ester bonds of triacylglycerols and phospholipids, respectively. In addition to the activity of hydrolases, they also catalyze esterification, transesterification, and interesterification reactions, and phospholipases also show acyltransferase, transacylase, and transphosphatidylation activities. Moreover, these biocatalysts have broad substrate specificity, high enantioselectivity, as well as stability in organic solvents and at extreme temperatures and pH. Thus, lipases and phospholipases represent a versatile group of biocatalysts that are widely used in asymmetric synthesis to produce optically active compounds or their precursors by the kinetic or dynamic kinetic resolution of racemates. Another usage of their catalytic activity is the modification of lipids to produce molecules with different physical and/or nutritional properties. Thus, lipases and phospholipases have found application in fine chemistry, pharmacy, agriculture, the food industry, and cosmetics.

Today, native enzymes of different origin are used for biocatalytic processes after isolation and purification. To improve their stability and catalytic properties, different strategies are used, namely, their immobilization by different techniques, or development of molecular techniques for the production of recombinant heterologous proteins in a host system allowing high-level protein expression and production of new redesigned enzymes.

For this Special Issue, contributions from new aspects of application of lipases and phospholipases in biocatalysis are welcomed, both in laboratory and industrial scale, including resolution of racemic mixtures and modification of lipids.

DSc. Witold Gładkowski
Guest Editor

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