Towards the integrated exploitation of microbial and enzymatic catalysis - Importance of substrate molecular technology and quest of biocatalysts, for designing synthetic plans

Nowadays, biocatalytic, involving microbial and enzymatic, transformations are widely applied for the production of fine chemicals, such as active pharmaceutical ingredients, and for the key reactions for the total synthesis of complex natural products. In this issue, we especially emphasize on two topics, the elaboration on "substrate molecular technology" and "quest of biocatalysts" in our examples of hydrolase-catalyzed kinetic resolution and asymmetric reduction. The aim of this approach is to find the optimized structure and synthetic routes of substrates, which would be maximally advantageous for both selectivity of enzyme-catalyzed reaction, and the total efficiency to target molecules.