Area 15C, Bioengineering - Plenary: Status of Biocatalysis: Protein and Process Engineering

Biocatalysts are often highly active and extremely selective but are only slowly gaining general acceptance for catalyzing most applicable transformations. However, there has been significant progress: (a) novel protein engineering tools have significantly enhanced biocatalyst development; (b) The deactivation of biocatalysts under various stresses can be i) described quantitatively via rational models and ii) remedied via accumulating all stabilizing mutations found in earlier rounds; (c) A host of novel biocatalysts in the past few years has considerably broadened the toolbox for synthetic chemistry.

The presentation discusses both status of and perspectives for biocatalysis. Examples are drawn both from others’ and the presenters’ own work, for applications ranging from transformations of renewable resources to highly selective synthesis in life science applications.