Redesigning nature's catalysts
Harnessing the power of enzymes to perform reactions outside their normal abilities is adding powerful tools to the synthetic chemist's armoury. James Mitchell Crow investigates
Enzymes are the molecule-making masters. Nature’s elegant answer to catalysis carry out a dazzling array of different transformations, with a selectivity and specificity that we can often only wonder at. Rather than trying to compete with this kind of performance, synthetic chemists are increasingly co-opting it instead. Using enzymes to catalyse our own reactions, though, is not the simple solution it might first sound.