Highly engineered biocatalysts for efficient small molecule pharmaceutical synthesis.

Technologies for the engineering of biocatalysts for efficient synthesis of pharmaceutical targets have advanced dramatically over the last few years. Integration of computational methods for structural modeling, combined with high through put methods for expression and screening of biocatalysts and algorithms for mining experimental data, have allowed the creation of highly engineered biocatalysts for the efficient synthesis of pharmaceuticals. Methods for the synthesis of chiral alcohols and amines have been particularly successful, along with the creation of non-natural activities for such desirable reactions as cyclopropanation and esterification.