Biocatalysis Now and Into the Future

Thus the use and practice of biocatalysis at full scale has waxed and waned over the years. In the past, one factor limiting the use of biocatalysis has been the availability of a variety of enzymes and the time taken to refine/evolve enzymes for specific industrial apphcations. Hydrolytic enzymes such as lipases and proteases designed for other industrial uses such as detergents and food processing have always been available in bulk, and indeed used by process chemists. 

Another aspect undoubtedly contributing to the increased knowledge and uptake of biocatalysis has been the strong industrial/academic consortia that have developed in Europe and the United States. These are exemplified by the Center of Excellence in Biocatalysis, Biotransformations and Biocatalytic Manufacture at Manchester, UK, the Applied Biocatalysis Research Center at Graz, Austria, and the Center for Biocatalysis and Bioprocessing, Iowa, USA. 

It is clear from the examples in this book that the use of biocatalysis can produce some very cost-effective and environmentally acceptable processes, and the authors anticipate that the use of this technology will increase as synthetic organic chemists realize its value and begin to look for strategic disconnections in the synthetic sequence of new target molecules where a biocatalytic step can be applied to utmost benefit. Thus, biocatalysis should be seen as a routine part of the synthetic toolbox and, in some cases, the reagent of choice for transformations such as the reduction of ketones to chiral alcohols, and not as a technology of last resort when all else has failed. 

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