Competitive sustainable production in industry demands new and better biocatalysts, optimized bioprocesses and cost-effective product recovery. Our review sheds light on the progress made for the individual steps towards these goals, starting with the discovery of new enzymes and their corresponding genes. The enzymes are subsequently engineered to improve their performance, combined in reaction cascades to expand the reaction scope and integrated in whole cells to provide an optimal environment for the bioconversion. Strain engineering using synthetic biology methods tunes the host for production, reaction design optimizes the reaction conditions and downstream processing ensures the efficient recovery of commercially viable products. Selected examples illustrate how modified enzymes can revolutionize future-oriented applications ranging from the bioproduction of bulk-, specialty- and fine chemicals, active pharmaceutical ingredients and carbohydrates, over the conversion of the greenhouse-gas CO₂ into valuable products and biocontrol in agriculture, to recycling of synthetic polymers and recovery of precious metals.

竞争性的可持续工业生产需要新的更好的生物催化剂，优化的生物工艺和具有成本效益的产品回收。我们的综述阐明了从实现新酶及其相应基因的发现入手，朝着实现这些目标的各个步骤所取得的进展。随后对这些酶进行工程改造以提高其性能，将其组合在反应级联中以扩大反应范围，并整合到整个细胞中，从而为生物转化提供最佳环境。使用合成生物学方法进行的菌株工程可以优化宿主的生产，反应设计可以优化反应条件，下游工艺可确保有效回收商业上可行的产品。₂进入贵重产品和农业生物防治领域，以回收合成聚合物并回收贵金属。