Design of Biocatalysts and Their Applications for Asymmetric Transformations, C-C Bond Formation and Biodegradation

Dear Colleagues,

A huge diversity of natural enzymes and accessibility of metagenomic and metabolomic data together with progress in protein engineering tools created a powerful platform for the development of biocatalysts for chemical transformations. Incorporation of single-step enzymatic transformation into the chemical process, development of chemoenzymatic processes or multi-step enzymatic cascades became available due to high-level expression of enzymes, effective approaches for stabilization of enzymes, modification of enzyme’s substrate scope and in-depth understanding of natural synthetic processes.

Great progress is observed in enzyme applications for the synthesis of non-natural compounds and the construction of artificial enzymes. These achievements are based on fundamental knowledge of structure-function relationships in enzymes and a deep understanding of active site architecture. Despite high throughput methods for the design of enzymes and enzymatic cascades, the development of a stable effective biocatalyst is still a time-consuming task, that requires knowledge and skills in various fields of biochemistry, molecular biology, and organic chemistry.

With this Special Issue, we aim to collect original research articles, review articles, and short communications dealing with the development of biocatalysts (both discovery of new enzymes and the design of enzymes for the process). Fundamental studies on the molecular basis of the stability of enzymes in harsh industrial environments, including water-organic solvent media are welcome. 

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to:

• Development of biocatalysts by rational design, directed evolution, in silico approaches, etc
• Change in substrate scope, tuning of enzyme’s active site for productive binding of complex substrates
• Enhancement of enzyme’s stability, stereoselectivity and turnover
• Fundamental studies on the enzyme’s stability in water-organic solvent media
• Biocatalysts with non-canonical amino acids
• Industrial enzymes discovered using metagenomic libraries (metagenomic screening approaches)
• Development of biocatalysts for asymmetric transformations, functionalization reactions, including C-H bond oxidation.
• Biocatalytic cascade development
• Application of enzymes in chemoenzymatic synthesis
• Application of enzymes in C-C bond formation and breaking.
• Elaboration of novel enzymatic mechanisms
• Non-natural products biosynthesis
• Artificial biocatalytic cascade reactions
• Photo-biocatalysis
• Enzymatic recycling of plastics

Dr. Ekaterina Yu. Bezsudnova
Guest Editor

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• biocatalyst
• stability of enzymes
• non-natural products
• cascade reactions
• substrate scope
• photo-biocatalysis
• applications of enzymes
• biocatalysis