GREEN CHEMISTRY
Biomanufacturing
Green chemistry can enhance and accelerate any research programme by helping to fast-track many of the roadblocks encountered as one scales up a molecule . Yet , the principles that Paul Anastas and I described in the mid-1990s must still overcome all of the technical and cost hurdles to scaling to a manufacturing process if they are to have a successful impact in the real world . Green chemistry needs a manufacturing partner . That partner is biomanufacturing , because it enables chemists to partner with nature to unlock biology ’ s potential as both a design tool and a means of production for chemicals and materials . biomanufacturing combines genomics , machine learning and automation into the chemistry and materials science R & D process ( Figure 1 ). While there is a great deal of diversity from product to product , and many levels of detail , we can think of biomanufacturing in three phases : designing the product , creating the microbe and scaling production . These processes use software applications , biology and chemistry tools , laboratory automation , machine learning and data sciences , and public and private databases .
Designing the product
As practised today , traditional chemistry relies on databases of thousands of molecular structures and synthetic pathways from hundreds of years of experimentation and publication . We combine human intuition with database search algorithms to find unique molecular structures , which , we believe , will have desired features and properties . With these specific molecules as targets , we create synthetic strategies to make these molecules . However , the researcher must be cautious . The chemistry of 100 years ago was designed within a different frame of reference . For one thing , it had a less developed understanding of the fundamental rules of chemistry . The Periodic Table itself has only been known for a little over 150 years . As we go back in time building from the works of the amazing pioneers of chemistry , we must calibrate their conclusions to their relative understanding of the time . Perhaps more importantly , traditional chemistry had a general disregard for addressing the principles of green chemistry .
Biofacturing unlocks nature ’ s molecular palette for the design of highly specialised chemical solutions . It exponentially amplifies the design process by investigating the vast databases of biological pathways and intermediates known to occur in cellular processes .
Creating the microbe
Many students of organic chemistry cringe at the memory of learning dozens , if not hundreds , of named reactions — the specific molecular transformations identified throughout history , each with its own unique but necessary reaction conditions . One might require an inert atmosphere at -78 o C ; another might require 250 o C under high pressure . One might be best performed under aqueous acidic conditions , while another uses liquid ammonia as a solvent . In no way should it be considered a criticism to point out that it is very often impossible to operate many of these reactions cost-effectively at a commercial scale . It is an astonishing testament to human ingenuity that these various transformations have been discovered at all , but the pragmatic challenge to scaling is nevertheless real .
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Figure 1 – Biomanufacturing at Zymergen
JUL / AUG 2021 SPECCHEMONLINE . COM
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