Recent developments in enzyme and microbial biotechnology--strategies in bioprocess design

Microorganisms have been used traditionally by industry as sources of natural products, or as sources of enzymes capable of mediating specific chemical transformations. This situation has changed radically in recent years, a time during which we have seen a dramatic increase in the number and range of potential biotechnological applications of enzymes and their genetically-engineered variants. An increasing number of enzymes, receptors and other proteins have now been structurally characterized, and their genes isolated as a basis for producing recombinant proteins for genetic analysis of their structure and function. These innovations have necessitated development of associated technologies for large-scale production of proteins in bioreactors, appropriate strategies for quality control, and new analytical tools for structural characterization of recombinant gene products. Some recombinant proteins are already in an advanced stage of development for use either as new-generation therapeutics, as target molecules for "intelligent" drug screening, or as biological components of biosensors. As the predictive power of protein model building improves, the diversity of applications of such technology will increase further as it becomes feasible to generate totally synthetic proteins with specifically-tailored properties.