The recent scientific progresses on the use of enzyme–mediated reactions in organic, non-aqueous and aqueous media have significantly supported the growing demand of new biotechnological and/or pharmacological products. Today, a plethora of microbial enzymes, used as biocatalysts, are available. Among these, microbial transglutaminases (MTGs) are broadly used for their ability to catalyse the formation of an isopeptide bond between the γ-amide group of glutamines and the ε-amino group of lysine. Due to their promiscuity towards primary amine-containing substrates and the more stringent specificity for glutamine-containing peptide sequences, several combined approaches can be tailored for different settings, making MTGs very attractive catalysts for generating protein–protein and protein small molecule’s conjugates. The present review offers a recent update on the modifications attainable by MTG-catalysed bioreactions as reported between 2014 and 2019. In particular, we present a detailed and comparative overview on the MTG-based methods for proteins and antibodies engineering, with a particular outlook on the synthesis of homogeneous antibody–drug conjugates.

中文翻译：

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使用微生物转谷氨酰胺酶生产生物治疗剂的最新进展

最近在有机、非水和水介质中使用酶介导反应的科学进展极大地支持了对新生物技术和/或药理产品不断增长的需求。今天，有大量用作生物催化剂的微生物酶可用。其中，微生物转谷氨酰胺酶 (MTG) 因其催化谷氨酰胺的 γ-酰胺基团和赖氨酸的 ε-氨基基团之间形成异肽键的能力而被广泛使用。由于它们对含伯胺底物的混杂性以及对含谷氨酰胺肽序列的更严格的特异性，可以针对不同的环境定制几种组合方法，使 MTG 成为非常有吸引力的催化剂，用于生成蛋白质-蛋白质和蛋白质小分子的缀合物。