Conclusions

Enzyme technology is presently going through a phase of maturation and evolution. The maturation is shown by the development of the theory concerning how enzymes function and how this is related to their primary structure through the formation and configuration of their three-dimension structure. The evolution is shown by the ever-broadening range of enzymic applications.

There still remains much room for the development of useful processes a materials based on this hard-won understanding. Enzymes will clearly be more widely used in the future and this will be reflected in the number enzymes available on an industrial (and research) scale, the variety of reactions catalysed and the range of environmental conditions under which they will operate. Established enzymes will be put to new uses and novel enzymes, discovered within their biological niches or produced by design using enzyme engineering, will be used to catalyse hitherto unexploited reactions. This is just the start of the enzyme technology era.

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This page was established in 2004 and last updated by Martin Chaplin
on 6 August, 2014