nature insights: Biocatalysis

Biocatalysis
Vol. 409, No. 6817 (11 January 2001).
|PDF(425K)|

Cover illustration
(Image courtesy of R. Harding)

Biocatalysis underpins some of the oldest chemical transformations known to humans, for brewing predates recorded history. The Sumerians, for instance, produced at least 19 different types of beer. This practical art was the fuse for the explosion in understanding of organic and biological chemistry that took place in the nineteenth century. Coining the word 'catalysis', Berzelius divined that it must play a central role in life's processes: "in the living plants and animals thousands of catalytic processes go on between the tissues and the fluids, and produce the amount of dissimilar chemical syntheses for whose formation from the common raw material...we could never see acceptable cause."

Studies of fermentation led to key insights into life's chemistry by Liebig, Pasteur and Emil Fischer, among others, culminating in the identification of enzymes ('in yeast') as nature's catalytic molecules and Fischer's intuitive leap of the 'lock and key' mechanism for their specificity. It is this specificity that draws the interest of chemists seeking selective catalytic agents.

This Insight shows just how far things have progressed since then. We begin with a survey of the vast diversity of potentially useful enzymes at the chemist's disposal, and then focus on how enzymes can become practical tools for the organic chemist, how some enzymes can develop altered or enhanced functions in nonaqueous solvents, and how new functions can be developed in modular enzymes. In vitro evolution techniques to 'breed' new, non-natural enzymes are then reviewed, and we conclude with an industry-wide perspective on the current successes and future challenges of using biocatalysts on a commercial scale.

We hope that readers will find this collection of reviews informative and thought provoking.

Philip Ball Consultant Editor