New Enzymes for Organic Synthesis

Book excerpt: Isolated enzymes are known as useful for synthesising of complex molecules with more and more large scale applications in recent years. These six reviews show different steps in the development of enzymatic syntheses for useful compounds. Screening of novel enzymes, their biochemical characterisation as well as reaction engineering approaches in order to increase their performance are treated in three papers. Then the use of protein design as a tool for the directed improvement of reactivity and selectivity of biocatalysts is described in two reviews. The supply of sufficient quantities of biocatalysts must not be neglected: fluidized bed adsorption as an emerging technology for the simple and fast purification of biomolecules is presented in the light of its potential in large scale supply of enzyme catalysts.