Enzymatic Catalysis Today and Tomorrow

Piotr Kieihasi ski, Ryszard Ostaszewski, and Wiktor Szymanski 

Compared to synthetic catalysts, enzymes have many advantages. First of all, being natural products, they are environmentally benign and therefore their use does not meet pubhc opposition. Enzymes act at atmospheric pressure, ambient temperature, and at pH between 4 and 9, thus avoiding extreme conditions, which might result in undesired side reactions. Enzymes are extremely selective (see below). There are also, of course, some drawbacks of biocatalysts. For example, enzymes are known in only one enantiomeric form, as they consist of natural enantiomeric (homochiral) amino acids their possible modifications are difficult to achieve (see Section 5.3.2) they are prone to deactivation owing to inappropriate operation parameters and to inhibition phenomena. 

However, the particular usefulness of enzymes stems from their selectivity. There are three types of selectivity exerted by enzymes chemoselectivity, regioselectivity, and stereoselectivity. 

1) An exception being ribozymes and DNA-zymes - polynucleotides - whose 

Novel Concepts in Catalysis and Chemical Reactors Improving the Efficiency for the Future. Edited by Andrzej Cybulski, Jacob A. Moulijn, and Andrzej Stankiewicz Copyright 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH Co. KGaA, Weinheim ISBN 978-3-527-32469-9 

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