Enzymatic glycosylation is a versatile and sustainable biotechnological approach that plays a pivotal role in the production of bioactive compounds. This process involves the enzymatic transfer of sugar moieties onto various acceptor molecules, such as small molecules, peptides, or proteins, resulting in the synthesis of glycosides. These glycosides often exhibit enhanced bioactivity, improved solubility, and enhanced stability, making them valuable in pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, and the food industry. This review explores the diverse enzymatic glycosylation strategies employed in the synthesis of bioactive compounds. It highlights the enzymatic catalysts involved, including glycosyltransferases, glycosidases, glycophosphorylases, and glycosynthases. It considers the advantages and disadvantages of these biocatalysts in the stereoselective and regioselective synthesis of different types of glycosylated molecules, phenolic and aliphatic alcohols, oligosaccharides, polysaccharides, glycoderivatives, glycopeptides, and glycoproteins with a clear focus on food and pharmaceutical chemistry. Furthermore, the review outlines various sources of sugar donors, activated glycosides, and sugar nucleotides, as well as the utilization of engineered enzymes and microorganisms for glycosylation reactions. The advantages of enzymatic glycosylation, including its high regioselectivity, stereoselectivity, and sustainability, are emphasized. Therefore, these approaches combining the use of different catalytic systems, the improvement of tools such as immobilization technology or chemical or genetic modification to improve the glycosylation process, could be useful tools in continuous biotechnological advancements.

BACKGROUND: In this work, fumed nano‐silica (FNS) was chemically modified to amino (AFNS) and subsequently to cyanuric chloride (CCAFNS) modified silica and tested for the immobilization of lipase from Candida rugosa (CRL). The effects of the initial enzyme concentration, immobilization time and buffer ionic strength on immobilization were investigated in order to optimize utilization of the support and determine the mechanism of immobilization. The most active preparations were used to examine thermal and operational stability.RESULTS: The amount of immobilized enzyme increased with increasing enzyme concentration, achieving loadings of 121.3, 104.8 and 61.2 mg per g of FNS, CCAFNS and AFNS, respectively. Lipase immobilized on CCAFNS carrier in 0.1 mol L⁻¹ buffer expressed the highest lipolytic activity (1320 IU g⁻¹ support), while more stable preparations were obtained in 1 mol L⁻¹ buffer.CONCLUSION: Successful modification of silica was confirmed with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and thermogravimetric analysis. Activity results showed that, depending on the support, immobilization was governed by different interactions. On FNS and AFNS immobilization was exclusively by adsorption, while on CCAFNS after the initial adsorption lipase molecules reoriented and amino groups of the enzyme formed a covalent bond with the chlorine atom of the modified carrier. Improved thermal and operational stability of lipase immobilized on CCAFNS in 1 mol L⁻¹ buffer led to the conclusion that electrostatic interactions have a great role in the immobilization. © 2014 Society of Chemical Industry

Galactosidases are group of enzymes gaining increasing attention in recent times due to the fact they catalyse hydrolysis of galatose-containing oligosaccharide, which reduce digestibility of various food and feed products. Microbial production of galactosidases is the most efficient and widely used. The aim of this study was to selects strain of lactic acid bacteria which can be used as producer of both, α- and β-galactosidases, since bacteria with such properties can be used for improving digestibility of products containing soybean and milk derivatives. In preliminary selection only intracellular activity of α- and β-galactosidases was detected and Lactobacillus reuteri was selected as the most adequate producer of both enzymes. In subsequent experiments, fermentation was optimized with respect to produced intracellular activity of both enzymes using spectrophotometric enzyme assays. Enzymes were characterized with respect to their temperature and pH optima. It was revealed that the most effective factor for production of enzymes is the selection of inducer. The addition of lactose induced production of β-galactosidase, while raffinose was the most efficient inducer of α-galactosidase production. Further improvement of enzyme production was achieved by optimization of inoculum concentration.