You need to know what an enzyme is.
You must have heard of enzymes. For example, there is a washing powder called alcohol washing powder. There is a drug called compound enzyme. There is no mystery about enzymes. When we eat steamed buns, we feel that the more we chew, the sweeter it is because an enzyme in our saliva can break down starch into sugar. Why do cattle and sheep grow up by eating grass? Why can’t pigs work? It’s because there are a lot of microorganisms that can produce cellulase in the stomachs of cattle and sheep. Through repeated chewing, commonly known as “Niu Dao Mo” and gastrointestinal peristalsis, the cellulose can finally be converted into glucose, which some animals can directly use. There are very few such microorganisms in the stomach of pigs, and there is no enzyme to decompose cellulose, so they will not grow up if they eat grass. The human stomach cannot digest cellulose. It is beneficial for people to take a small amount of cellulose, not because it has nutritional value, but because it can promote gastrointestinal motility, help digestion, facilitate excretion, and benefit gastrointestinal health.
The future of enzyme development
Biotechnology is one of the most promising technologies in the 21st century, and enzymes are avant-garde industries in the biotechnology field and promising emerging strategic industries. As a kind of efficient biocatalyst, enzyme preparation has the advantages of high efficiency, strong specificity, high controllability, safety, and environmental protection, etc.. It can be used in food, feed, environmental protection, papermaking, medicine, chemical industry, and agriculture. The food industry is the industry that uses the most enzyme preparations. With the continuous deepening of the primary research of enzymology in my country and the rapid development of the enzyme preparation industry, the variety of domestic enzyme preparations is gradually increasing, and the gap between the technical level and the developed countries is slowly narrowing.
A Brief Introduction to Enzyme Development
The enzyme is a unique protein with catalytic function produced by living cells, which plays a vital role in various physiological activities in organisms. Enzymes come from a wide range of sources, and animals, plants, and microorganisms can synthesize a wide variety of enzymes during growth and metabolism. At the first international enzyme-related conference held in the United States in 1971, enzyme-related research was named “enzyme engineering,” marking the formation of enzyme engineering disciplines and a complete technical system. As early as thousands of years ago, our ancestors had historical records of winemaking, vinegar making, sauce making, and cheese making, and they knew how to use “Wei” to treat indigestion and other discomfort symptoms, which shows that the ancients had already had a preliminary understanding of enzymes. Understanding. The knowledge of the nature and importance of enzymes mainly occurred in the 17th century. People’s ability of enzymes began when scientists discovered that biological materials have a catalytic effect.
In 1833, French chemists Anselme Payen and Jean-Francois Persoz isolated an active substance from the aqueous extract of malt, which can promote the decomposition of starch into sugar. They called this substance diastase. In 1861, when the French biologist Pasteur studied the use of yeast for alcohol fermentation, he found that the presence of oxygen in the fermentation vessel would stop the production of alcohol, and he realized that there was a substance in the living yeast cells that could ferment sugar to produce alcohol. It was not until 1878 that the German physiologist William Kühne called the importance involved in alcoholic fermentation in yeast “enzyme” for the first time. He proposed the term enzyme to represent various known organized ferments. In 1896, German chemist Eduart Buchner ground yeast cells with quartz sand to prepare an extract without yeast cells. This extract can also ferment glucose into ethanol, indicating that the enzyme can catalyze both inside and outside the cell, thus proving that fermentation is the chemical essence of enzyme action, and it is wrong to distinguish an enzyme from the enzyme. He called this fermentable protein an alcoholic enzyme. This discovery promoted the separation of enzymes, the exploration of their physical and chemical properties, and the research on enzyme systems in various biological processes. Eduard Büchner won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this reason.