Enzymes research needs

In 1993, Dr. Wu found that, with a single additive, the same enzyme was able to remove phenols from waste water. Her strategy worked even for the low concentrations of phenols typical of industrial waste water. Moreover, significantly lower concentrations of the enzyme were needed Dr. Wu s discovery brought researchers one step closer to a commercial process, which would mean cleaner waters and less stress on the environment. 

Cofactor catabolism is still an understudied area in cofactor chemistry and much research needs to be done to identify catabolic intermediates, the enzymes that catalyze the formation of these intermediates and the... 

This article has described the results of our studies which were undertaken to determine what type of chemical components in the extracts of diesel exhaust particulate account for their direct-acting mutagenicity in the Salmonella assay. These findings, along with those of other investigators, have demonstrated that this activity can be ascribed to a variety of nitroaromatic compounds, principally, the nitrated derivatives of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. We have also studied the way in which mammalian enzyme activity can affect the mutagenic properties of these compounds. There are clearly future research needs in both of these areas. 

An enzyme immunoassay technique has been employed for measuring endosulfan and its degradation products (i.e., endosulfan diol, endosulfan sulfate, endosulfan ether, and endosulfan lactone) in water at 3 ppb (Chau and Terry 1972 Musial et al. 1976). However, this technique is not currently in use in environmental residue analysis. Further research into this technique could produce a rapid, rehable, and sensitive method for identifying contaminated areas posing a risk to human health. No additional methods for detecting endosulfan in environmental media appear to be necessary at this time. However, methods for the determination of endosulfan degradation products are needed. 

The fact that relatively few commercial processes currently utilize dehydrogenases, in spite of the high level of interest at the research and bench scales, argues that progress is needed in this area before these enzymes can be considered to be a normal part of chemical synthesis. Many of these advances will come by partnerships with genomics, nanotechnology and computational approaches. In the discovery area, key questions for the future are ... 

Future research should also focus its attention on the factors/mechanisms that regulate free-radical activity in vivo. The complex interrelationship between cellular and extracellular levels of antioxidants needs to be clarified, and factors that govern the synthetic rate of the scavenging enzymes, for example, SOD or catalase will provide further insight into cellular redox control. 

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