Biocatalysis using Thermostable Cytochrome P450 Enzymes in Bacterial Membranes - Comparison of Metabolic Pathways with Human Liver Microsomes and Recombinant Human Enzymes.

Detailed structural characterization of small molecule metabolites is desirable during all stages of drug development, and often relies on the synthesis of metabolite standards. However, introducing structural changes into already complex, highly functionalized small molecules both regio- and stereo-selectively can be challenging using purely chemical approaches, introducing delays into the drug pipeline. An alternative is to use the cytochrome P450 enzymes (P450s) that produce the metabolites in vivo, taking advantage of the enzyme's inherently chiral active site to achieve regio- and stereoselectivity.

Use of engineered cytochromes P450 for accelerating drug discovery and development.

Numerous steps in drug development, including the generation of authentic metabolites and late-stage functionalization of candidates, necessitate the modification of often complex molecules, such as natural products. While it can be challenging to make the required regio- and stereoselective alterations to a molecule using purely chemical catalysis, enzymes can introduce changes to complex molecules with a high degree of stereo- and regioselectivity. Cytochrome P450 enzymes are biocatalysts of unequalled versatility, capable of regio- and stereoselective functionalization of unactivated CH bonds by monooxygenation.

SeqScrub: a web tool for automatic cleaning and annotation of FASTA file headers for bioinformatic applications.

Data consistency is necessary for effective bioinformatic analysis. SeqScrub is a web tool that parses and maintains consistent information about protein and DNA sequences in FASTA file format, checks if records are current, and adds taxonomic information by matching identifiers against entries in authoritative biological sequence databases. SeqScrub provides a powerful, yet simple workflow for managing, enriching and exchanging data, which is crucial to establish a record of provenance for sequences found from broad and varied searches; for example, using BLAST on continually updated genome sequence sets.