Biocatalysis

Biocatalysis has become an important aspect of modern organic synthesis, both in academia and across the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Its success has been largely due to a rapid expansion of the range of chemical reactions accessible, made possible by advanced tools for enzyme discovery coupled with high-throughput laboratory evolution techniques for biocatalyst optimization. A wide range of tailor-made enzymes with high efficiencies and selectivities can now be produced quickly and on a gram to kilogram scale, with dedicated databases and search tools aimed at making these biocatalysts accessible to a broader scientific community. This Primer discusses the current state-of-the-art methodology in the field, including route design, enzyme discovery, protein engineering and the implementation of biocatalysis in industry. We highlight recent advances, such as de novo design and directed evolution, and discuss parameters that make a good reproducible biocatalytic process for industry. The general concepts will be illustrated by recent examples of applications in academia and industry, including the development of multistep enzyme cascades. In this Primer, Flitsch and colleagues describe how biocatalysis is facilitating synthetic chemistry in both academia and industry. Detailed considerations required to find, select and optimize a biocatalyst are described, followed by an analysis of the performance metrics used to define a good industrial catalyst.