Editorial Note: Advances in Enzymology and Enzyme Engineering

since the dawn of time. In fact they are vitally important to the existence of life itself. Civilizations have used enzymes for thousands of years without understanding what they were or how they work. The modern history of enzymes dates back to 1833 when, in the journal Annales de Chemie et de Physique, the French chemists Anselme Payen and Jean-Franois Persoz described the isolation of an amylase complex from germinating barley and named it diastase. Like malt itself, this product converted gelatinized starch into sugars, primarily maltose. In 1835 the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius demonstrated that starch can be broken down more efficiently using malt extract than sulphuric acid and coined the term catalysis. In 1836, while investigating digestive processes, the German physiologist Theodor Schwann isolated a substance responsible for albuminous digestion in the stomach and named it pepsin, the first enzyme prepared from animal tissue. In 1876, William Kuhne proposed that the name 'enzyme' be used as the new term to denote phenomena previously known as 'unorganised ferments', that is, ferments isolated from the viable organisms in which they were formed. The word itself means 'in yeast' and is derived from the Greek 'en' meaning 'in', and 'zyme' meaning 'yeast' or 'leaven'.