ABSTRACT
Biotransformation deals with use of natural and recombinant microorganisms (e.g., yeast, fungi, bacteria), enzymes, whole cells, etc., as catalysts in organic synthesis. Biotransformation plays a key role in the area of foodstuff, chiral drug industry, vitamins, specialty chemicals, and animal feed stock (Fig. 1.1). Scaling up a bioprocess from the lab to a commercial scale is challenging and needs several innovations. Nevertheless, more and more industries are moving toward developing processes based on biocatalysis because of their inherent advantages. In the year 2000 biotechnology stocks traded in the Nasdaq exchange outperformed the overall index by 24% (outperformed the Internet stocks by 17%)! This observed general buoyancy is due to the successful applications of biotransformations in the field of pharmaceuticals, environmental bioremediation, textiles, plastics, and agriculture. Biopolymers made from dextrose and plastics made from corn sugar beet and other biomass compete with polymers made from hydrocarbons. Breakthroughs in the area of optimization, reactor design, separation techniques, and molecular modeling are a few of the underlying reasons for these successes.
