Artificial enzyme removes natural poison

For the first time ever, a completely man-made chemical enzyme has been successfully used to neutralise a toxin found naturally in fruits and vegetables.

While studying for her PhD in chemistry at the University of Copenhagen Jeannette Bjerre showed how a novel so-called chemzyme was able to decompose glycoside esculin, a toxin found in horse-chestnuts.

Chemzymes are designed molecules emulating the targeting and efficiency of naturally occurring enzymes.

In several important aspects artificial enzymes function in the same way as naturally occurring ones. But where natural enzymes are big and complex, the artificial ones have been pared down to the basics.

One consequence of this simplicity is that designing chemzymes for targeted tasks ought to be easier. With fewer parts, there's less to go wrong when changing the structure of chemzymes.

By Jes Andersen

For more information:

http://news.ku.dk/all_news/2010/2010.8/artificial_enzymes/