Current role of in silico approaches for food enzymes

YiZhang¹, Alberta NAAryee², Benjamin KSimpson¹

Department of Food Science & Agricultural Chemistry, McGill University, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Québec, H9X 3V9, Canada.

Abstract

Food enzymes include enzymes deliberately added to foods as bioprocessing aids, and naturally occurring endogenous types in food materials that can influence overall food product quality. Advances in food enzyme research are providing deeper insights into enzyme function and enabling the development of novel improved food enzymes using combinations of in silico methods and conventional experimental methods. Commonly used in silico techniques such as multiple sequence alignment, molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation are being used accompanied by the expanding biological databases and improving computational capacity. They are playing a significant role in investigating catalytic processes, discovering new enzymes, analyzing substrates or products or inhibitors, and helping with the development of effective strategies for immobilization or inactivation of food enzymes in enzyme-related food bioprocessing.