Enzyme Handbook 16

Today, as the large international genome sequence projects are gaining a great amount of public attention and huge sequence data bases are created it be­ comes more and more obvious that we are very limited in our ability to access functional data for the gene products - the proteins, in particular for enzymes. Those data are inherently very difficult to collect, interpret and standardize as they are highly distributed among journals from differentfields and are often sub­ ject to experimental conditions. Nevertheless a systematic collection is essential for our interpretation of the genome information and more so for possible appli­ cations of this knowledge in the fields of medicine, agriculture, etc.. Recent pro­ gress on enzyme immobilization, enzyme production, enzyme inhibition, coen­ zyme regeneration and enzyme engineering has opened up fascinating new fields for the potential application of enzymes in a large range of different areas. It is the functional profile ofan enzyme that enables a biologist or physician to analyse a metabolicpathwayand its disturbance; it is the substrate specificityof an enzyme which tells an analytical biochemisthow to design an assay; it is the stability, specificityand efficiencyofan enzyme which determines its usefulness in the biotechnicaltransformation ofa molecule. Andthe sumofallthese data will have to be considered when the designerofartificial biocatalysts has to choose the optimum prototype to start with.