Facts and Figures in Enzyme Biocatalysis

The goal of enzyme biocatalysis is to preserve the outstanding properties of enzymes as catalysts while overcoming their constraints. Besides their use as process catalysts in industrial processes, enzymes have found important applications in chemical and clinical analysis, therapy, environmental management, and biotechnological research and development. Enzymes can also be used as additives (e.g. amylases and proteases in bread making), in order to confer certain functional properties on the product. Enzymes that perform the metabolic reactions of synthesis are usually complex, unstable coenzyme-requiring proteins, however, readily available hydrolases can, catalyze the reverse reactions of synthesis. Enzyme biocatalysis has evolved from the traditional use of enzymes in molecular degradation of natural compounds, conducted in aqueous media and usually under conditions of homogeneous catalysis, to their more sophisticated use in reactions of organic synthesis from natural or non-natural substrates with hydrolases-and other enzymes-mostly under conditions of heterogeneous catalysis in nonconventional reaction media.