Biotech Values

[poorgradstudent]

>Please elaborate—I’m not yet sure what you’re driving at.<

My point was simply for accuracy with respect to the scientific nomenclature. Kinda like people mixing up nucleotide and nucleoside.

Restriction enzymes are enzymes that are used to manipulate DNA. I don't think MNTA's process has any advanced need of DNA manipulation so they're unlikely to have tried to generate any proprietary restriction enzymes.

When you're manipulating proteins and non-DNA chemicals (such as carbohydrates) with enzymes, then these are no longer restriction enzymes. Enzymes that digest proteins are usually called proteases, whereas enzymes that convert chemicals (ie. break down and manipulate sugars) are usually generically called enzymes but are specifically categorized with an -ase added to the end. For example, aldolases cleave aldols, oxidases use O2 for their reaction, etc...

MNTA likely has reason to manipulate the substrate specificity, selectivity, or maximum kinetic activity of enzymes that are involved in the production of enox. They can do this through various means, including manipulating the conditions under which the enzyme is working, or change the amino acid sequence of the enzyme until they hit upon a mutant that has the properties they seek. My opinion is that even though these changes may be patentable, it would make little difference as there are too many ways to manipulate enzyme activities. Another company could generate a proprietary enzyme with an activity profile similar to ones developed by MNTA without approaching infringement imo.