2.6 Dual Catalysis with Two or More Biocatalysts

Abstract

The remarkable activity, selectivity, and stability of many commercially available or easily prepared biocatalysts, along with their simple operative conditions and the intrinsic “greenness” of biocatalytic processes, have all contributed to a rapidly accelerating expansion of the research area dedicated to the design and development of one-pot multistep synthetic approaches involving two or more enzymes and/or microbial cells. A brief survey of the literature is presented, focusing mainly on efficient protocols that are generally applicable to a broad range of substrates and relevant to the synthesis of small, often chiral, organic molecules as synthons for the pharmaceutical and fine-chemical industries.