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Industrial applications of cold-adapted enzymes: challenges, innovations and future perspective

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Abstract

Extreme cold environments are potential reservoirs of microorganisms producing unique and novel enzymes in response to environmental stress conditions. Such cold-adapted enzymes prove to be valuable tools in industrial biotechnology to meet the increasing demand for efficient biocatalysts. The inherent properties like high catalytic activity at low temperature, high specific activity and low activation energy make the cold-adapted enzymes well suited for application in various industries. The interest in this group of enzymes is expanding as they are the preferred alternatives to harsh chemical synthesis owing to their biodegradable and non-toxic nature. Irrespective of the multitude of applications, the use of cold-adapted enzymes at the industrial level is still limited. The current review presents the unique adaptive features and the role of cold-adapted enzymes in major industries like food, detergents, molecular biology and bioremediation. The review highlights the significance of omics technology i.e., metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and metaproteomics in enzyme bioprospection from extreme environments. It further points out the challenges in using cold-adapted enzymes at the industrial level and the innovations associated with novel enzyme prospection strategies. Documentations on cold-adapted enzymes and their applications are abundant; however, reports on the role of omics tools in exploring cold-adapted enzymes are still scarce. So, the review covers the aspect concerning the novel techniques for enzyme discovery from nature.

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Acknowledgements

AK acknowledges the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science and Technology Government of India, for the PhD studentship award (DBT/JRF/BET-17/I/2017/AL/367). SM acknowledges the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Government of India, for Senior Research Fellowship (SRF) award (No. 45/17/2020-/BIO/BMS). RK acknowledges the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, for the DST INSPIRE faculty award (DST/INSPIRE/04/2014/001280). Authors acknowledge the financial support by the CSIR in-house project MLP00201, NMHS project of MoEF&CC (NMHS sanction no. GBPNI/NMHS-2018-19/SG/178), Science and Engineering Research Board Start-up research Grant no. SRG/2019/001071) and DST-TDT project no. DST/TDT/WM/2019/43. This manuscript represents CSIR-IHBT communication no. 4838.

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AK, SM: conceptualization, writing—original draft. RK: conceptualization, writing—review and editing, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Rakshak Kumar.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Kumar, A., Mukhia, S. & Kumar, R. Industrial applications of cold-adapted enzymes: challenges, innovations and future perspective. 3 Biotech 11, 426 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-021-02929-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-021-02929-y

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