Using Enzymes for Catalysis under Industrial Conditions

Using enzymes for the catalysis of synthetically interesting chemical reactions enables high selectivity under mild conditions. However, for biocatalysis to be viable in an industrial context, reaction performance metrics must meet certain values to ensure cost-effectiveness, especially for the production of lower priced products. In industrial reactors, enzymes must function under conditions that are quite different from those in nature. Industrial reactors often involve not only high concentrations of substrates and products but also concentration gradients as well as gas–liquid interfaces. Conventionally, enzymology has primarily focused on understanding enzymes under a limited range of conditions such as temperature and pH, but there is now a pressing need to develop a new branch of enzymology tailored to industrially relevant environments. Achieving this will require the development of a novel scale-down apparatus that can replicate industrial conditions within a laboratory setting as well as new standardized screening models to discover enzymes that can perform well under such conditions.