Volume 3 Issue 3, March 2020

Humankind faces many challenges to continue social and technological development in a sustainable manner. This Comment elaborates how increasing the synthetic capacity of biocatalytic systems can contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The introduction of single abiological catalytic groups enables enzymes to catalyse new-to-nature chemical transformations. Now, this concept is extended to two abiological groups in a single protein scaffold to allow synergistic catalysis in a stereoselective Michael addition reaction.

Synthetic chemical processes often do not operate at sustainable or mild conditions—in contrast with natural complex reaction networks. This Perspective provides a roadmap for bio-inspired integrated catalytic systems for chemical manufacturing, sketching a biologically based future of industrial catalysis.

Genetic incorporation of unnatural amino acids into proteins broadens the possibilities of enzyme design. This Perspective discusses the exciting opportunities for biocatalysis offered by this method — such as new-to-nature catalytic activities — and potential benefits over classical enzyme engineering.

Advances in enzyme performance and capabilities are making them increasingly attractive to synthetic chemists. In this Review Chen and Arnold outline the ways that enzymes have been engineered to achieve reactivities well beyond their original functions.

Bioelectrocatalysis provides access to sustainable and highly efficient technological applications, but several limitations still prevent the large-scale integration of such devices. This Review discusses the current status of hydrogenase-based biofuel cells and biophotoelectrodes for solar energy harvesting.

Electrochemical reactions can provide necessary redox equivalents for biocatalysis. In this Review, Minteer and co-workers summarize the current status and challenges of enzymatic and microbial bioelectrocatalysis for the green and efficient production of target products using electricity.

Artificial photosynthetic technologies could potentially contribute to limiting global warming while providing useful chemicals for society. This Review Article covers photosynthetic semiconductor biohybrids—electrodes/nanomaterials coupled with microorganisms—for light-driven catalytic conversion of CO₂ to fuels and other value-added chemicals.

Spatial organization of biocatalytic cascades can improve their performance. In this Review Article, Itamar Willner and colleagues discuss technologies to artificially confine and localize enzyme cascades, the origin of observed rate enhancements and potential applications of such designed systems.

A shift from sugar-based feedstocks and biomass to the use of atmospheric CO₂ for the bioproduction of fuels and chemicals is desirable. This Review describes how microorganisms can be engineered for CO₂ fixation and industrial valorization of this key molecule.

Abiological catalytic components can increase the synthetic potential of enzymes. This work reports an enzyme with two different abiological catalytic moieties—an organocatalytic unnatural amino acid and a metal complex—that act synergistically to achieve highly enantioselective Michael addition reactions.

Investigation of proximity-driven enzyme regulation in intracellular signalling could benefit from suitable model systems. This work reports the engineering of a synthetic DNA origami-based apoptosome facilitating detailed analysis of caspase-9 activation, which is essential in programmed cell death.

To implement more sustainable processes in industry, a high efficiency of microbial biocatalytic systems for the production of industrial chemicals from renewable feedstocks is important. Now, engineering the lifespan of Escherichia coli is presented as a platform technology for improving the bioproduction of chemicals.

Enzyme engineering is opening up new chemistries. Here, the authors report enzymes engineered to contain two biological active sites — also showing that one site can be converted to a metal-complex catalyst — and demonstrate the utility of such dual sites in a range of catalytic processes.