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The tools of modern molecular biology have led to an explosion in the number and range of biocatalysts available for use in the pharmaceutical industry. Bespoke recombinant mutant enzymes for organic synthesis can now be rapidly developed. Biocatalysis is now an underpinning part of the green chemistry tool box to enable safe and low environmental impact synthesis of API's and intermediates. As a result of this rapid expansion in the industrial biotechnology arena, a large number of enzymes are now commercially available ‘off the shelf’ to the synthetic organic chemist. This chapter will look at several enzyme classes and the variety of molecules that can be readily synthesised from them. The work will cover an Introduction to recent advances in biocatalysis, with some examples of enzyme classes readily accessible to medicinal chemists/synthetic organic chemists without the need for specialist skills and facilities in fermentation and molecular biology. The enzyme classes are: Hydrolase enzymes, Ketone reductases, ωTransaminase enzymes and Cytochrome P450's. Synthetic biology is starting to make an impact in the pharmaceutical manufacturing and discovery arenas, and a couple of examples of the application of synthetic biology will be described.

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