Introduction	Scientific Groups	Techniques Available	Personnel
Web pages in the Department	ABG:Applied Biocatalysis BEC:Bio-Electrocatalysis GIBB:Biotransformations and Engineering of Biocatalysts (in Spanish)

Introduction:

The possibility that all mankind can get access to new and better drugs of low cost, more abundant and better foods, a much more efficient agriculture, new sources of energy, more accurate analytical methods, etc., is a necesary social and economic challenge to be met every day. In order to achieve that it is necessary to use simpler technologies of lower energetic cost. In doing so one could make new and more complex chemical transformations under benign environmental conditions. This new "super fine" clean and low cost chemistry is one of the big challenges of the present chemical industry, for which the urgent search and optimization of new and better catalysts are needed.

The enzymes are biological catalysts that appear to meet most of the requirements needed to impel this new chemical industry:

• they are very active catalysts in aqueous media under very mild conditions of pressure, pH, etc.
• they are very specific catalysts: they can modify one only substrate in a mixture of very similar substrates, and can even distinguish the two isomers of the racemic mixture of a chiral compound.
• they are very selective catalysts: they can modify one particular chemical bond or functional group in a molecule with various reactive positions.

Despite these excellent catalytic properties, the enzymes have evolved over the centuries to better fulfil the physiological requirements of the living beings rather than to be used in industrial chemical processes. Thus the enzymes are soluble and generally very unstable catalysts which suffer inhibitions by the substrates and products; futhermore, in many cases the enzymes do not have the ideal properties (activity, selectivity, etc.) needed to catalyse non-natural processes (i.e., esterification instead of hydrolysis) over non-natural substrates under non-conventional experimental conditions (i.e., non-toxic organic solvents).

The Department of Biocatalysis of the the Institute of Catalysis and Petroleum Chemistry of CSIC is formed by five research groups working towards the following objectives:

• to deeper learn about the mechanisms of enzymatic catalysis.
• to explore new possible applications of enzymes.
• to eliminate barriers that hinder the massive industrial use of enzymes.

These objectives constitute the basis of the research lines undertaken by the four research groups, namely:

1. Biochemical aspects of catalysis by hydrolases (lipases, estearases, proteases, amidases).
2. Biochemical aspects of catalysis by metalo-enzymes (hydrogenases).
3. Purification of enzymes by affinity chromatography.
4. Estabilization of soluble enzymes by chemical modifications.
5. Estructure-function relationship of enzymes in micellar systems.
6. Preparation of derivatives of immobilised enzymes.
7. Estabilization of enzymes in solid phase.
8. Interaction and immobilisation of enzymes on electrodes.
9. Application of enzymes to food technology.
10. Aplicación de enzimas en química fina y farmacéutica.
11. Study and design of new biosensors (enzymes, antibodies, oligonucleotides).
12. Application of enzymes for envieronmental protection.

Other relevant aspects of applied biocatalysis with a marked micobiological character (screening, directed evolution and mutagenesis) are carried out in collaboration with other national and internationa Departments, of which we want to mention the group of Prof. José Luis García López of the Centre of Biological Research, CSIC, and the group of Prof. Víctor de Lorenzo of the National Centre for Biotechnology, CSIC.

Research Groups:

Available Equipment:

1. FPLC for purification of proteins
2. HPLC: analytical and semi-preparative
3. Gas chromatography
4. VIS-UV spectroscopy and fluorescence
5. Automatic titration (pH-Stato)
6. Anaerobic chamber
7. Microbalance
8. Microscopy of atomic forces
9. Resonance of surface plasmon
10. EPR
11. Sensor for water activity
12. Titrator for low water content (Karl Fisher)
13. Electrochemical infrared spectrometry (FTIR)
14. Microbalance of quartz crystal
15. Quadrupole mass spectrometer
16. Electrochemical stations

(Back to Departments)