Enzymen, span de natuur voor je karretje

Samenvatting:
De lezing wordt in het Nederlands gepresenteerd. 

Enzymes are Nature’s catalysts. They perform carefully regulated and highly integrated chemical conversions inside living cells. But fortunately (for Industry) there are also enzymes with a more robust function, in particular the enzymes that are transported to function outside the cell. Such enzymes are usually more robust – good news for industrial application – but they are limited to a smaller set of chemical conversions, mainly hydrolysis and oxidation. 

Although secreted enzymes are good starting points for industrial processes, that does not mean that their function cannot be improved for specific processes. We will discuss what constraints are found when attempting to do this. For instance: why are enzymes so big compared to the chemicals that they often deal with (and compared to chemical catalysts for the same type of reaction). This discussion will involve substrate recognition and positioning, and the need to allow structural rearrangements as part of the reaction mechanism.

Curriculum vitae dr. Hugo Streekstra 
Hugo Streekstra started his academic training in Chemistry in 1978 at the University of Amsterdam. He graduated in 1983 with a specialization in Microbiology. This was followed by a research subject in Microbial Physiology at the same University, which led to the successful defense of a PhD thesis entitled "Metabolic Uncoupling in Anaerobic Klebsiella pneumoniae" in 1990.

Since 1988 he has been working in the industry, located in Delft, the Netherlands, in various fields, including fermentation process development, classical genetics and applied biochemistry. Currently he is employed by DSM, an international business-to-business company manufacturing performance materials and life science products. He holds the position of Principal Scientist in Applied Biochemistry and Physiology within the DSM Biotechnology Center.

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