Pepsin Enzyme Origins! Everything, Right From The Root To The Fruit!

The Pepsin Enzyme has been a part of humans since the very beginning, and putting emphasis on “since the beginning” cannot reach its purpose because it actually means from the very beginning of humans!

Pepsin is a digestive enzyme that can be found in the stomach among the other digestive juices and helps break the protein bonds into simpler substances to ease digestion!
This shows that it was present in the very 1st humans who walked the Earth because we wouldn’t be here if it didn’t! This substance along with several others played a huge role in ingesting proteins and helping us grow.

Historical Significance

Discovered in the early 1800s, Theodore Schwann identified that it stands at the top with two other enzymes, making up the whole digestive system! It was determined to be one solution that could convert nitrogen-based foods into water-soluble substances, ultimately helping in the digestion of proteins.

The history class doesn’t end here!

Its name “Pepsin” somehow relates to digestion and was derived from the Greek word ‘Pepsis’ which means digestion!

Another historical trivia states that in 1928, the pepsin enzyme was amongst the first to be crystallized!

John H Northrop was the person who was able to crystallize the pepsin enzyme using 3 different processes. He was able to create history by becoming the first person to crystallize this enzyme!

And here we can end the history trivia and get back to the topic of the hour which is ‘the uses of pepsin enzyme in today’s modern 21st-century world!’

The Science Behind Its Functioning

Pepsin’s major ball game starts when it comes to breaking the bonds! Breaking these heavier bonds is its main task as the other two reigning substances are not able to break the heavier bonds of protein. These heavier bonds, if not processed, would pose major drawbacks when it comes to digesting food!
Imagine the fact that this substance,
barely ever used in layman language, solely helped us break down proteins into proteases and further into water-soluble molecules for our bodies to ingest!

Looking At Your Tummy Differently, Are You Now? 

But we humans always have a tendency of commercializing everything we see happening around us and something similar happened in the case of Pepsin!
Upon discovering the fact that we would practically become herbivores without it, we humans sought ways to extract the same which resulted in the uprising of its various uses!

Commercializing The Pepsin Enzyme:

Modifying Proteins In Foods

Until now you could’ve guessed this one use of Pepsin enzyme and that is its use as a digestion supplement. Pepsin enzyme has been used as a substance to trigger better digestion. The part where it boasts of improving digestion is simply the fact that it can pre digest heavy proteins making it easy for the stomach to digest the rest.

Hide Bating

This enzyme has been a boon to the leather industry and is prevalent in one process which might not be too neat if explained in depth.
A warning pre hand for the ones who can just not bear gore!
This enzyme is used to remove the undesirable traces of hair and tissue on the partially processed animal hide that is sent for processing.
That ends the gory part, but we cant end up ignoring the fact that leather making itself has a lot of it!

Golden Era Laxative

There has been significant evidence that pepsin was used in a laxative syrup that was sold quite a lot during the late 1800s. The fact that a laxative ingredient is used now to ensure proper digestion has quite some irony about it!

Scientific Research

The last application of the Pepsin enzyme is in scientific researches and investigations!
It has been used to cleave antibodies into ‘FABS’ or ‘Functional Antigen-Binding’ fragments. This helped avoid nonspecific binding by reducing the chances of the Antibodies interacting with immune cells!

Pepsin enzyme has quite a few applications in today’s world and probably we humans are going to come up with several others over the span of time! But this doesn’t give us the excuse of not knowing about pepsin and other enzymes similar to this one. Having knowledge about enzyme culture holds a significant place now of all times because we have reached a threshold where reducing our chemical usage in every field has to be reduced if we desire to have a place to live in for the coming years!
Enzymes are the answer to a chemical-free and it is our duty to gain the needed knowledge and implement it in our daily life.

This enzyme has been a boon to the leather industry and is prevalent in one process which might not be too neat if explained in depth.

A warning pre hand for the ones who can just not bear gore!
This enzyme is used to remove the undesirable traces of hair and tissue on the partially processed animal hide that is sent for processing.

That ends the gory part, but we cant end up ignoring the fact that leather making itself has a lot of it!