Applied enzyme nanoreactors in medicine and food bioprocessing

Abstract

Enzymes nanoreactors are lipid bilayer vesicles that contain free enzymes in the trapped aqueous space. Through the incorporation of some biological units (functional proteins) in vesicular walls, these systems can mimic living cells because they can act as transfer channels for some molecules between the environment and inner vesicle water soluble area (vesicle permeability) or can act as receptors for living cells. Entrapped free enzymes can act on specific substrates, which can diffuse from the environment inside of vesicles, and the enzyme reaction products can diffuse outside of vesicles where they can be used as bioactive compounds, drugs in living organisms, or reagents in analytical determinations (in vitro). In this paper structures of enzyme-containing vesicles will be presented and discussed, and some possible applied enzyme nanoreactors in medicine and food bioprocessing.