Engineering of Extremophilic Phospho-triesterase-Like Lactonases for Biotechnological Applications

Organophosphate compounds, including most agricultural pesticides and chemical warfare agents, first appeared on this planet during the 20th century. Currently, enzymatic detoxification of organophosphate compounds has become an important issue worldwide, because their continuous and excessive use has led to the contamination of many terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Our attention in the last years has been focused on the enzymes belonging to amidohydrolase su-perfamily. In particular, a new family of lactonases with promiscuous phospho-triesterase activity, dubbed PTE-like Lactonases (PLLs), has been discovered. We reported an overview of the actual use of organophosphate compounds and the hydrolytic enzymes able to degrade them. Among members of PLL family there are enzymes that hydrolyze pesticides, show high thermal resistance and, there-fore, are very attractive from a biotechnology point of view. The combination of different in vitro evolution methods represents a successful approach to increase their promiscuous phosphotriesterase activity in order to obtain efficient detoxifi-cation enzymatic tools.