Enzymatic amidation for industrial applications.

Nature has developed a robust toolbox for the formation of amide bonds, enabling a variety of disconnections applicable to small molecule synthesis. In spite of this, the exploitation of biocatalytic techniques for industrial synthesis remains limited to a few very important cases. This review discusses previously demonstrated techniques for the biocatalytic synthesis of amide bonds, reviews examples of industrial scale-up of these techniques, and identifies a number of limitations to the scalability within the current state of the art.