Industrial Biotransformation*

Biocatalysis or biotransformation encompasses the use of biological systems to catalyze the conversion of one compound to another. The catalyst part of the biological system can thereby consist of whole cells, cellular extracts, or isolated enzyme(s). Up to the second decade of the twentieth century, processes based on biotransformations were classified under various denominations such as ‘‘zymotechnology’’ or ‘‘technical biology’’. The term biotechnology was first used in the year 1917 (1). Already then, in the early times of industrial biotechnology, the leading representatives of the new science promoted the idea of using biological systems to create more efficient, more selective, and environmentally friendlier processes for the conversion of raw materials into industrial products, thereby substituting problematic chemical transformations. The concept of a more sustainable use of the limited resources was thus one of the driving forces for the rapid development of industrial biotechnology long before the now worldwide accepted political vision of sustainable development was promoted by national and international conferences and organizations. Thanks to genetic engineering techniques introduced in 1973, enzymes from all kinds of biological sources can now be recloned and overexpressed in easily mass cultivatable microorganism or cell cultures. With this technology, even enzymes that have been rare up to the present can be produced in large quantities and at affordable costs. In addition, whole-cell biocatalysts or production organisms can now be genetically improved by directed engineering of metabolic pathways. An OECD-report of 1998 (2) analyzes the state of the art and the future development needs for industrial biotechnology. Some important conclusions in this report summarizing the state of the art are the following: