ABSTRACT

Food and feed is possibly the area where processing anchored in biological agents has the deepest roots. Despite this, process improvement or design and implementation of novel approaches has been consistently performed, and more so in recent years, where significant advances in enzyme engineering has fastened the place of such developments. Targeted improvements aim at enzymes with enhanced thermal and operational stability, improved specific activity, modification of pH-activity profiles, and increased product specificity, among others. This has been mostly achieved through protein engineering and enzyme immobilization, along with improvements in screening. The latter has been considerably improved due to the implementation of high-throughput techniques, and due to developments in protein expression and microbial cell culture. Expanding screening to relatively unexplored environments (marine, temperature extreme environments) has also contributed to the identification and development of more efficient biocatalysts. Technological aspects are considered, but economic aspects are also briefly addressed.

INTRODUCTION:

Food processing through the use of biological agents is historically a well-established approach. The earliest applications go back to 6,000 BC or earlier, with the brewing of beer, bread baking, and cheese and wine making, whereas the first purposeful microbial oxidation dates from 2,000 BC, with vinegar production. Coming to modern days, in the late XIX, century Christian Hansen reported the use of rennet (a mixture of chymosin and pepsin) for cheese making, and production of bacterial amylases was started at Takamine (latter to become part of Genencor). Pectinases were used for juice clarification in the 1930s, and for a short period during World War II, invertase was also used for the production of invert sugar syrup in a process that