Researchers from BASF, the Austrian Research Centre of Industrial Biotechnology (acib) and the University of Graz in Austria have co-developed a fundamentally new computer-assisted model that can improve enzyme performance and enable new biocatalytic production processes to be scaled up faster from the lab to industrial manufacturing.

Enzymes are proteins that perform many functions in the human body and all other organisms. They are biological catalysts that speed up chemical reactions. Enzymes are involved in almost all metabolic processes in the body, such as the digestion of food or the formation of cells and tissue. The chemical industry also uses enzymes as biocatalysts in production processes. BASF uses them to make products such as vitamins, flavorings or ingredients for cosmetics and detergents.

But enzymes are very sensitive and stop working properly if, for example, the temperature is too high. “They are then no longer correctly folded and lose their three-dimensional structure, which means no further catalytic reactions can take place in their active center,” explains Dr. Stefan Seemayer, global head of computational protein engineering at BASF. However, enzymes also cannot function optimally when temperatures are too low, producing lower volumes of the desired product.

The activity of the biocatalysts can also be influenced by substances contained in the reaction medium, such as solvents. “We need solvents so that the enzymes can quickly produce large amounts of the desired end product from the starting materials, for example, fats,” says Seemayer. Without solvents, the enzymes are unable to fully access the substances and transform them into other materials. But if the solvent concentration or the temperature are too high, the enzymes lose their structure and stop being active. On the other hand, if the concentration or the temperature are too low, this can reduce product output.