INTRODUCTION Enzymes are biological catalyst that alters the chemical reaction rate without itself being altered which reacts with the substrate and converts the enzyme substrate complex into different molecules – product. Enzyme plays the consequential role in functioning of life process such as for growth, digestion of nutrients, excretion of metabolic waste, energy provider to brain and muscles and thus directly or indirectly involved in every biological processing of life. Apart from numerous life functioning role, enzymes are also used in industry-oriented procedure such as for drug delivery in biomedical research, production of biodiesel in energy sector, production of jams and syrups in food industry, treatment of sewage in waste management
Henceforth comes the concept of “Artificial Enzymes” the de novo engineered enzymes that are non-toxic and biodegradable.
Artificial Enzymes also defined as enzyme mimicker are specially designed and synthesized molecules with the attributes of enzyme that advocates catalysis by mimicking the active site of enzyme. The main approach in the design of these engineered mimickers is understanding the concept of binding/proximity effect i.e., the binding of substrate to the active site of enzyme which results in catalysis due to proximity effect. Therefore the “mechanism of catalysis” can be recreated by using small molecules (such as few amino acids, proteins) that can possibly mimic the enzyme active site. These novel catalysts incorporate the typical enzyme catalytic groups and they achieve selectivity in their reactions by use of geometric control, as do enzymes and this has led to rate acceleration by optimizing the structural geometry. Since artificial enzymes functions by holding together molecules as they act on the
Examples of metalloenzymes are carboxypeptidase which contains a zinc ion involved in hydrolytic digestion of enzyme, hemoglobin containing iron-porphyrin complex functioning as oxygen carrier in human body, hexokinase containing magnesium metal ion, vitamin B12 complex containing cobalt maintaining healthy nerve cells and production of genetic material- DNA and RNA. There upon designing such metalloenzymes can lead towards a constructive path of attaining novel and efficient process catalysis for biomedical applications and other industrial