My second published paper review is based on the enzyme peroxidase.
Peroxidases are enzymes that belong to the class oxidoreductase, its EC number is 1.11.1.x. There are 15 different EC number for peroxidase which is grouped into different families and subfamilies. Peroxidase activity is involved in physiological, biological and developmental processes base on the type of organism they are present in; plants or animal species. For example auxin metabolism, ligin, suberin formation and hormone regulation in plants and animals species respectively. The enzyme peroxidase is also involved in aiding the immune system of human in the defense against pathogenic diseases and other diseases. Peroxidase is present in almost all living organism, they use hydrogen peroxide as electron acceptor in order to catalyze their oxidative reaction.
Peroxidase can be haem or non haem proteins. Based on the peroxidase having haem or non haem proteins they are found in different families. Haem peroxide are found only in fungi, plants, bacteria and animals whereas non haem peroxidase is found in five (5) independent families; thiol peroxidase, alkylhydroperoxidase, non-haem haloperoxidase, manganese catalase and NADH peroxidase
Mammals contains haem peroxidase which is involved in disease prevention and human pathologies, this occurs when the haem peroxidase uses hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) to develop more aggressive oxidants to fight off intruding bacteria.
PeroxiBase is an database system that stores data on peroxidase superfamilies which is used to follow the evolution of peroxidase in living organism. It is also involved in compiling information regarding the transcriptional regulation and function of peroxidase for medical uses and research.
The database currently has over 6000 peroxidase encoding sequences from 94 organisms. A new has been developed to classify new peroxidase number based on PROSITE profile methodology. The main purpose of this database is to make information with grading peroxidase readily easy to attain.
In our last biochemistry lab we dealt with different enzyme, one of which was peroxidase, hence the reason for selecting this paper to review. After reading this paper I have learned so much more about peroxidase whereas before I knew so little. I was so shock to see how peroxidase activity in our body is of major importance. For example, I did not know peroxidase enzyme in our body is involved in fighting diseases among their other functions. Another interesting fact I came across while reading is the amount of sub classes and sub- sub classes there are for peroxidase and each class plays an important functional role in living organism (plants or animals).
I must admit this article was really interesting as I learned so much interesting facts about peroxidase, mostly how they work to fight bacteria and diseases in human.
REFERENCE:
Koua Dominique, Lorenzo Cerutti, Laurent Falquet, Christian J. A. Sigrist, Grégory Theiler, Nicolas Hulo and Christophe Dunand.2008. “PeroxiBase: a database with new tools for peroxidase family classification.” Accessed April 3rd 2013. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2686439/
sachabiochem0001 