Environmental metagenomics: An innovative resource for industrial biocatalysis

The current existing enzymes have been identified from cultivable micro-organisms, most frequently from bacteria. These bacterial biocatalytic capabilities have been widely used for biotransformations, resulting in the development of profitable industrial bioprocesses in the fields of feed and food processing, textiles, agro-chemistry, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and fine chemistry. However, the originality of this bioresource is progressively drying up, while requests from industry for novel biocatalytic activities are increasing in the face of economic and environmental pressure. Metagenomics, through access to the huge reservoir of uncultivated bacteria which represents the majority of the present biodiversity, opens the door to new industrial sources of enzymes. Surmounting hurdles encountered with this technology ( e. g. DNA extraction to obtain high quality DNA libraries with proper statistical representativity, setting up of relevant high throughput screenings assays, combining functional and genome-based identifications), gives unique opportunities to access novel biocatalysts that better fit with the required industrial specifications, thus providing new biocatalysis tool boxes.