Future of Biocatalysis in the Synthesis of Organic Compounds

This chapter summarizes the future of biocatalysis, focusing particularly on the short- and long-term needs for growth in this field. The former category includes issues such as new types of enzyme-catalyzed reactions and their development into viable synthetic processes, catalytic promiscuity facilitating nonnative reactions of enzymes, computational enzyme design and hybrid biocatalysts that combine enzymatic and organometallic strategies. Long-term issues include the need for increased supplies of synthetically useful enzymes with very high consistencies vital for commercial applications, a need for more process and engineering data, and more rapid enzyme-improvement strategies that yield enzymes with better properties avoiding the need for individual campaigns for each new substrate.