Hydrolases: The Most Diverse Class of Enzymes

Abstract

Being the largest and most diverse class of enzymes, hydrolases offer an opportunity to explore the conformational diversity which forms the basis of their differential biological functions. In recent times, there is an urge to re-evaluate and update our existing knowledge on functional and conformational transitions of these enzymes, in the context of emerging scientific trends. In this chapter, we discuss hydrolases in terms of their diversity, classification, and different nomenclature styles that exist. Further, the concepts of protein stability and significance of studying the structure–function relationship of hydrolases are mentioned in detail taking serine protease as an example. The chapter talks about multiple ways by which an enzyme’s structure and function can be explored. The available information and literature survey on hydrolases have been systematically summarized for an easy understanding. Various experimental methods and techniques involving artificial intelligence are introduced in the later sections. The knowledge obtained by these strategies contributes to our current knowledge of the interplay between the stability, structure, and function of these enzymes. This, in turn, can help in designing and engineering these proteins with improved functional and structural features toward the goal of increasing their applicability in biotechnology.