Sheldon Roger A
Department of Biotechnology, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands.
Department of Chemistry, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Chemistry. 2024 Sep 25;30(54):e202402207. doi: 10.1002/chem.202402207. Epub 2024 Sep 6.
The development of sustainable chemistry underlying the quest to minimize and/or valorize waste in the carbon-neutral manufacture of chemicals is followed over the last four to five decades. Both chemo- and biocatalysis have played an indispensable role in this odyssey. in particular developments in protein engineering, metagenomics and bioinformatics over the preceding three decades have played a crucial supporting role in facilitating the widespread application of both whole cell and cell-free biocatalysis. The pressing need, driven by climate change mitigation, for a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, has precipitated an energy transition based on decarbonization of energy and defossilization of organic chemicals production. The latter involves waste biomass and/or waste CO as the feedstock and green electricity generated using solar, wind, hydroelectric or nuclear energy. The use of waste polysaccharides as feedstocks will underpin a renaissance in carbohydrate chemistry with pentoses and hexoses as base chemicals and bio-based solvents and polymers as environmentally friendly downstream products. The widespread availability of inexpensive electricity and solar energy has led to increasing attention for electro(bio)catalysis and photo(bio)catalysis which in turn is leading to myriad innovations in these fields.
在过去四五十年里，人们一直在探索可持续化学的发展，其目的是在化学品的碳中和生产过程中尽量减少废物并使其增值。化学催化和生物催化在这一历程中都发挥了不可或缺的作用。特别是在过去三十年中，蛋白质工程、宏基因组学和生物信息学的发展，在推动全细胞和无细胞生物催化的广泛应用方面发挥了关键的支持作用。为缓解气候变化，迫切需要大幅减少温室气体（GHG）排放，这促使了基于能源脱碳和有机化学品生产去化石化的能源转型。后者涉及将废弃生物质和/或废弃一氧化碳作为原料，以及使用太阳能、风能、水能或核能产生的绿色电力。将废弃多糖用作原料将推动碳水化合物化学的复兴，以戊糖和己糖作为基础化学品，以生物基溶剂和聚合物作为环境友好型下游产品。廉价电力和太阳能的广泛可得性，使得人们对电（生物）催化和光（生物）催化的关注日益增加，这反过来又在这些领域引发了无数创新。
