Why do we love enzymes?

Enzymes have matured by evolution over billions of years into extremely efficient catalysts that initiates and accelerates various types of chemical reactions, and what is even more spectacular, which can facilitate those reactions with unmatched chemo-, regio- and enantio-selectivity at ambient conditions. Tailored biocatalysts allow converting substrates with efficient manufacturing by improving product purity and yields, reducing production process steps, eliminating toxic by-products from the production process, obviating the cautious handling of sensitive materials, and by limiting the need for capital expenditures, what brings lower costs and greater profitability.

Moreover, biotransformations of non-natural organic compounds employing isolated enzymes or whole microbial cells are essential for the synthesis of high value-added products including pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, fine chemicals, fuels, functional materials, flavors and fragrances, that are currently difficult or impossible to produce by conventional chemical approaches. Beside the above-mentioned facts, enzymatic catalysis as a major pillar of so-called applied biotechnology is considered to be one of the fundamental methods of green chemistry, the concept which successfully began to replace conventional chemical processes that are usually characterized by undesired energy consumption from high temperatures or pressures, and by waste generation from harsh for environment hazardous reagents or catalysts composed of toxic transition-metals. Moreover, the potential of enzymes in terms of the broad scope of reactions which they can trigger has not yet been fully exploited.

Therefore, the development and discovery of new biocatalysts with improved capabilities, the optimization of their useful functions, and their subsequent assembly into novel synthetic applications including sustainable preparation of valuable products became far beyond the scopes of the academia only, but also turned to be one of the main goals of chemical industry in its cutting-edge technologies. Considering the above-stated facts as well as a broad spectrum of other advantages, BIOCATALYSIS became our first love!