Edwin Alfonzo

Biocatalysis, using enzymes to catalyze chemical reactions, is now a powerful and rapidly expanding tool in chemical synthesis. Advancements in enzymology, bioinformatics, protein engineering, automation, and machine learning have dramatically accelerated the discovery and application of enzymes in new technologies. Yet, despite this progress, enzymes remain limited in functional scope compared to traditional chemical catalysts. Organic chemists are uniquely positioned to address this gap by using chemical intuition and mechanism-based design to expand enzyme reactivity beyond where Nature has gone. We use organic chemistry as a foundation to rethink what enzymes can do, developing catalysts for new-to-nature transformations by using methods and ideas from protein engineering, enzymology, and data science.