Enzyme engineering for enantioselective biotransformations

Abstract Many enzymes in nature are enantioselective—having evolved to match the chirality present in major biomolecules—to the extent that the ability of enzymes to be enantioselective has emerged as a fundamental property that is often exploited in biocatalysis. However, natural enzymes often exhibit insufficient or even incorrect enantioselectivity; hence, a major hallmark of enzyme engineering is the improvement, inversion, or even removal of stereoselectivity of natural enzymes to suit specific applications. Directed evolution has emerged as a valuable tool for modifying enzymes for biosynthetic applications. The enantioselectivity of many enzymes has been modified to perform ever more challenging stereoselective syntheses. In this work, various methodologies for the directed evolution and high-throughput screening of enzymes for use in enantioselective biotransformations are reviewed.