Proteases: Multifunctional Enzymes in Life and Disease

Our view of proteases has come a long way since P. A. Levene reported his studies on “The Cleavage Products of Proteoses” in the first issue of The Journal of Biological Chemistry published October 1, 1905 (1Levene P.A. J. Biol. Chem. 1905; 1: 45-58Abstract Full Text PDF Google Scholar). Today, after more than 100 years and 350,000 articles on these enzymes in the scientific literature, proteases remain at the cutting edge of biological research. Proteases likely arose at the earliest stages of protein evolution as simple destructive enzymes necessary for protein catabolism and the generation of amino acids in primitive organisms. For many years, studies on proteases focused on their original roles as blunt…