Materials from Enzymes
The biological reactions are ubiquitous and potential of these reactions for organic synthesis especially in polymer science have been recognized for quite some time, as evident by the number of publications. Enzymes in organic media exhibit novel properties such as enhanced thermostability, altered specificity and ability to catalyze new reactions (such as chiral syntheses). In addition, organic solvents have many advantages over aqueous reaction media for industrial processes, including increased ease of product recovery, enhanced solubility of hydrophobic substrate molecules, and reduced microbial contamination of biocatalytic reactors. We are conducting an extensive study of mechanism of biocatalytic processes in anhydrous environments, enabling the generation of a predictive model to explain the activity and specificity of enzymes as function of properties of the solvents in which it is placed.
Our research group focuses on the combined use of enzymes with benign solvents such as ionic liquids and supercritical fluids for the synthesis of high value polymers such as linear hydroxylated and fluorinated polyesters with pendant hydroxyls and their copolymers, which cannot be synthesized using traditional chemical synthesis.
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