Drug metabolism in human liver is a process involving many different enzymes. Among them, a number of cytochromes P450 isoforms catalyze the oxidation of most of the drugs commercially available. Each P450 isoform acts on more than one drug, and one drug may be oxidized by more than one enzyme. As a result, multiple products may be obtained from the same drug, and as the metabolites can be biologically active and may cause adverse drug reactions (ADRs), the metabolic profile of a new drug has to be known before this can be commercialized. Therefore, the metabolites of a certain drug must be identified, synthesized and tested for toxicity. Their synthesis must be in sufficient quantities to be used for metabolic tests. This review focuses on the progresses done in the field of the optimization of a bacterial self-sufficient and efficient cytochrome P450, P450 BM3 from Bacillus megaterium, used for the production of metabolites of human enzymes. The progress made in the improvement of its catalytic performance towards drugs, the substitution of the costly NADPH cofactor and its immobilization and scale-up of the process for industrial application are reported.

The intensive use of pesticides has led to their increasing presence in water, soil, and agricultural products. Mounting evidence indicates that some pesticides may be endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), being therefore harmful for the human health and the environment. In this study, three pesticides, glyphosate, thiacloprid, and imidacloprid, were tested for their ability to interfere with estrogen biosynthesis and/or signaling, to evaluate their potential action as EDCs. Among the tested compounds, only glyphosate inhibited aromatase activity (up to 30%) via a non-competitive inhibition or a mixed inhibition mechanism depending on the concentration applied. Then, the ability of the three pesticides to induce an estrogenic activity was tested in MELN cells. When compared to 17β-estradiol, thiacloprid and imidacloprid induced an estrogenic activity at the highest concentrations tested with a relative potency of 5.4 × 10⁻¹⁰ and 3.7 × 10⁻⁹, respectively. Molecular dynamics and docking simulations predicted the potential binding sites and the binding mode of the three pesticides on the structure of the two key targets, providing a rational for their mechanism as EDCs. The results demonstrate that the three pesticides are potential EDCs as glyphosate acts as an aromatase inhibitor, whereas imidacloprid and thiacloprid can interfere with estrogen induced signaling.

[FeFe]-hydrogenases reversibly catalyse molecular hydrogen evolution by reduction of two protons. Proton supply to the catalytic site (H-cluster) is essential for enzymatic activity. Cysteine 298 is a highly conserved residue in all [FeFe]-hydrogenases; moreover C298 is structurally very close to the H-cluster and it is important for hydrogenase activity. Here, the function of C298 in catalysis was investigated in detail by means of site saturation mutagenesis, simultaneously studying the effect of C298 replacement with all other 19 amino acids and selecting for mutants with high retained activity. We demonstrated that efficient enzymatic turnover was maintained only when C298 was replaced by aspartic acid, despite the structural diversity between the two residues. Purified CaHydA C298D does not show any significant structural difference in terms of secondary structure and iron incorporation, demonstrating that the mutation does not affect the overall protein fold. C298D retains the hydrogen evolution activity with a decrease of k_cat only by 2-fold at pH 8.0 and it caused a shift of the optimum pH from 8.0 to 7.0. Moreover, the oxygen inactivation rate was not affected demonstrating that the mutation does not influence O₂ diffusion to the active site or its reactivity with the H-cluster. Our results clearly demonstrate that, in order to maintain the catalytic efficiency and the high turnover number typical of [FeFe] hydrogenases, the highly conserved C298 can be replaced only by another ionisable residue with similar steric hindrance, giving evidence of its involvement in the catalytic function of [FeFe]-hydrogenases in agreement with an essential role in proton transfer to the active site.