Engineering life into new chemical transformations

摘要

Nature has had many generations to optimise its catalytic processes. As a result they are both extremely efficient and exquisitely selective. Biocatalysis is now very much a mainstay of industrial organic synthesis, particularly with the advent of protein engineering and directed evolution enabling the preparation of robust enzymes fine-tuned to a particular substrate. The importance of this technology was recognised in 2018 with the award of the chemistry Nobel prize to Frances Arnold for her pioneering work on directed evolution of enzymes. Despite significant advances, biocatalysis is limited to natural chemical reactions, precluding its wide application in general synthetic chemistry, where small molecule catalysts still have the upper hand. That said the repertoire of ''unnatural'' enzyme mediated transformations is increasing, particularly with engineered metalloenzyme systems. This article describes how development of new to Nature chemistry is evolving and what lies on the horizon.