Published Date: Apr 01 2023
Enzymes are essential core substances of life. Gene editing, stem cell technology, targeted drugs. Many key technologies and product manufacturing in life sciences rely on enzymes. With the rapid development of modern biotechnology, scientists' understanding of enzymes has become deeper. The use and modification of enzymes, this "green manufacturing," not only improves human lives but also opens the door to designing life.
People's understanding of enzymes may start with wine. There is a view that wine originated in this way: ancient laborers had surplus food, so they stored them in empty mulberry tree holes. Over time, the food became a liquid with a fragrance. Later, this unintentional discovery became a conscious behavior, and winemaking was born. However, people at that time did not know that the winemaking process was the beginning of human's earliest use of enzymes-the reason why sugars in grains can turn into alcohol is that enzymes are at work.
Trypsin enzyme
Trypsin enzyme can be roughly divided into two types. One is the traditional animal-source trypsin enzyme, mainly extracted from the pancreas tissue of cows or pigs. Its disadvantage is that it may bring the risk of viral contamination. The other is non-animal source trypsin, also known as recombinant trypsin, which is produced using genetic recombination technology.
Early trypsin enzyme was mainly used in the production of insulin in biological manufacturing, but soon it began to shine in other fields. Animal-source trypsin enzyme has great potential risks. It may itself carry a large number of viruses that can infect humans, such as the BSE virus carried by cows with mad cow disease, pig foot-and-mouth disease viruses, and avian flu viruses that can spread between humans and animals.
Recombinant trypsin
Recombinant trypsin is one of the recombinant enzymes produced through genetic engineering technology. It is a form of trypsin enzyme that is synthesized in the laboratory and not extracted from animal sources (such as pig or cow pancreas).
Recombinant trypsin has many potential uses, including drug production, research tools, and biotechnology applications such as protein drug production, cell separation, vaccine production, and preparation of tissue samples for cell analysis, while addressing the risk of viral contamination that may come with the use of traditional pig or cow trypsin enzyme. The 2020 version of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia included the quality standards for non-animal source recombinant trypsin for the first time. Overall, recombinant trypsin is an indispensable tool enzyme in the field of biological medicine and scientific research.
