Enzyme biocatalysis and its path to industrial stardom

Research in industrial biotechnology has delivered impressive biocatalysts as pivotal green chemistry solutions for the pharma, energy, and chemical commodities sectors. Next-generation DNA sequencing technologies enriched enzyme discovery methods with vast genomics data from microbial communities and single genomes. This review summarizes discovery methods like soil enrichments, metagenomics, and bioinformatics mining with a general focus on transaminases for their industrial prowess. Improvements enabling industrial enzymatic applications through protein engineering and directed evolution are briefly highlighted. The causes of a costly imbalance between collecting genomics data and knowledge generation are also discussed. Once this imbalance is overcome, we will be on the verge of unmasking exquisite commercial potential of sequence databases and go beyond the proverbial ‘tip of the iceberg’ for biocatalysts.