High Throughput Discovery of Alcohol Dehydrogenases for Industrial Biocatalysis

Abstract

Abstract To speed up the discovery of novel biocatalysts for industrial synthesis, an efficient screening approach has been set up. The huge potential of natural biodiversity has been taken advantage of in a discovery protocol using bioinformatics analysis, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques and direct in vitro expression of enzymes. This approach led to the direct characterization of 19 novel thermoactive alcohol dehydrogenases with a broad substrate range, that set up a useful enzymatic “toolbox” for fine chemistry synthesis.