Chemical biotechnology--a marriage of convenience and necessity.

摘要

Industrial or ‘white’ biotechnology uses microorganisms or isolated enzymesfor the production of bulk and fine chemicals, as well as food ingredients,bioplastics, and biofuels 1. Its importance has been steadily increasing dueto the need to develop sustainable chemical processes which protect theenvironment, reduce or eliminate the use of hazardous chemicals, andminimize energy consumption and waste production. In this area, thecombination of traditional chemistry with biocatalytic processes and fermentationtechnology offers great potential. The term ‘chemical biotechnology’circumscribes this multidisciplinary approach, which is mainlydriven by synthetic and bio-chemists, molecular biologists, and proteinand bioprocess engineers. Bioinformatic tools have also proven indispensabletogether with computer modeling methods. Rapid progress in moleculargenetic techniques including metagenomics, enzyme optimization byrational design and directed evolution, and systems biological approaches toengineer metabolic pathways have greatly increased the scope for themanipulation and repurposing of metabolic pathways and have resultedin a great many new processes and products.