Overcoming bottlenecks towards complete biocatalytic conversions and complete product recovery

Abstract

Biocatalysis has become an attractive and powerful technology for resource-efficient conversions of starting materials to products because of selectivity, safety, health, environment and sustainability benefits. One of the key success factors for any synthetic method has traditionally been the yield of the product which has been isolated from the reaction mixture after the conversion and purified to the required purity. The conversion economy and the final product recovery, which determine the isolated yield of a product, are therefore also of key importance for biocatalytic processes, from biocatalytic single-step to multi-step reactions and total synthesis. In order to progress towards complete biocatalytic conversions and to aim at completely recovering and isolating the pure product, relevant thermodynamic, kinetic and other constraints leading to incomplete biocatalytic conversions and incomplete product recovery need to be identified and overcome. The methods and tools for overcoming various types of bottlenecks are growing and can provide valuable guidance for selecting the most suitable approaches towards the goal of achieving 100% yield of the isolated pure product for a specific biocatalytic conversion.