Production of Amino Acids Using Wild Type and Recombinant Whole Cell Catalysts : Using Platform Technologies for Enhancing Production Efficiency

The use of enzymes and whole cell biocatalysts has proven valuable in production of enantiomercally pure proteinogenic and non-proteinogenic L- and D- amino acids, and their derivatives. These chemicals are of great interest as building blocks for pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and agriculture products. In addition to the increasing importance of single enantiomers of chiral active ingredients this development is a result of recent advances in molecular biological methods like recombinant enzyme expression, high throughput DNA sequencing and enzyme evolution technologies. This chapter gives an introduction of important technologies for Evonik Degussa for the production of amino acids by biocatalysis.