Recent advance of chemoenzymatic catalysis for the synthesis of chemicals: Scope and challenge

Chemoenzymatic catalysis can give full play to the advantages of versatile reactivity of chemocatalysis and excellent chemo-, regio-, and stereoselectivities of biocatalysis. These chemoenzymatic methods can not only save resource, cost, and operating time but also reduce the number of reaction steps, and avoid separating unstable intermediates, leading to the generation of more products under greener circumstances and thereby playing an indispensable role in the fields of medicine, materials and fine chemicals. Although incompatible challenges between chemocatalyst and biocatalyst remain, strategies such as biphasic system, artificial metalloenzymes, immobilization or supramolecular host, and protein engineering have been designed to overcome these issues. In this review, chemoenzymatic catalysis according to different chemocatalysis types was classifiably described, and in particular, the classic dynamic kinetic resolutions (DKR) and cofactor regeneration were summarized. Finally, the bottlenecks and development of chemoenzymatic catalysis were summarized, and future development was prospected.