Engineering Biocatalytic and Biosorptive Materials for Environmental Applications.

The challenges of increasing environmental contamination and scarcity of natural resources require innovative solutions to ensure a sustainable future. Recent breakthroughs in synthetic biology and protein engineering provide promising platform technologies to develop novel engineered biological materials for beneficial applications towards environmental sustainability. In particular, biocatalysis and biosorption are receiving increasing attention as sustainable approaches for environmental remediation and resource recovery from wastes. This review focuses on up-to-date advances in engineering biocatalytic and biosorptive materials that can degrade persistent organic contaminants of emerging concern, remove hazardous metal pollutants, and recover value-added metals. Opportunities and challenges for future research are also discussed.