Cleaner industrial processes often necessitate the use of catalysts with minimal impact to the environment. In contrast to inorganic catalysts that are not specific and require high energy input to speed up reactions, enzymes catalyze reactions with high specificity under benign conditions. This highly specific nature of enzymes, however, comes at a cost: it limits their application to specific process conditions (different process conditions will require enzymes with different properties). Given the variety and complexity of industrial processes, enzymes with suitable properties are highly sought after but at high cost. Although protein engineering by rational design or directed evolution has enabled the improvement or creation of enzymes with desirable or new properties, screening enzymes from the local environment is equally needed, particularly to sample the diversity of native enzymes, to discover unforeseen properties that can be used as cues for further enzyme advancement, and more importantly, to reduce the cost associated with enzyme manufacturing. Despite this importance, the development of native enzyme screening technologies has not reached a deployable state and access is still limited to advanced laboratories. Here, I discuss the strategies to screen microbial hydrolytic enzymes based on conventional methods and how we might develop them into a bioprospecting platform for industrial applications in resource-limited settings.
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