Recent Advances in Phospholipase C Applications in Food Industry: From Molecular Mechanisms to Green Processing Technologies

Phospholipase C has become a pivotal biocatalyst in agricultural and food chemistry, enabling efficient degumming while producing diacylglycerol as a nutraceutical. Over the past two decades, more than 40 microbial, plant, and mammalian PLCs have been characterized, revealing conserved catalytic frameworks but broad diversity in regulatory domains and substrate scope. Advances in protein engineering have yielded thermostable variants active above 70 °C and pH 3.5 and 10.0, while enzymatic routes cut energy use by up to 70% compared with chemical methods. This Perspective presents a comprehensive synthesis that integrates food engineering, sustainability, and enzyme biotechnology. It summarizes PLC's evolutionary origins, structure-function relationships, and production strategies and highlights rational mutagenesis, directed evolution, and AI-guided redesign improving catalytic stability and process compatibility. Industrial applications─including oil refining, dairy optimization, and functional lipid generation, demonstrate measurable efficiency gains and environmental benefits, positioning PLC as a model enzyme for sustainable bioprocessing within a circular bioeconomy.