Engineering cytochrome P450 enzymes

The last 20 years have seen the widespread and routine application of methods in molecular biology such as molecular cloning, recombinant protein expression, and the polymerase chain reaction. This has had implications not only for the study of toxicological mechanisms but also for the exploitation of enzymes involved in xenobiotic clearance. The engineering of P450s has been performed with several purposes. The first and most fundamental has been to enable successful recombinant expression in host systems such as bacteria. This in turn has led to efforts to solubilize the proteins as a prerequisite to crystallization and structure determination. Lagging behind has been the engineering of enzyme activity, hampered in part by our still-meager comprehension of fundamental structure-function relationships in P450s. However, the emerging technique of directed evolution holds promise in delivering both engineered enzymes for use in biocatalysis and incidental improvements in our understanding of sequence-structure and sequence-function relationships, provided that data mining can extract the fundamental correlations underpinning the data. From the very first studies on recombinant P450s, efforts were directed toward constructing fusions between P450s and redox partners in the hope of generating more efficient enzymes. While this aim has been allowed to lie fallow for some time, this area merits further investigation as does the development of surface-displayed P450 systems for biocatalytic and biosensor applications. The final application of engineered P450s will require other aspects of their biology to be addressed, such as tolerance to heat, solvents, and high substrate and product concentrations. The most important application of these enzymes in toxicology in the near future is likely to be the biocatalytic generation of drug metabolites for the pharmaceutical industry. Further tailoring will be necessary for specific toxicological applications, such as in bioremediation.