Polyketide synthases as a platform for chemical product design

To reduce the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on climate change, scientific efforts have sought to develop biofuels and bio‐based commodity chemicals as petrochemical replacements primarily for their environmental benefits. As the biological design space is far greater than chemical synthesis, there has been a drive to leverage this ability to create and replace fine and specialty chemicals. While polyketide synthases have traditionally been studied for their biosynthesis of pharmaceutical chemicals, the unique advantages of engineering polyketide synthases for the production of biofuels, commodity chemicals, and both pharmaceutical and nonpharmaceutical fine and specialty chemicals are discussed. With our increased understanding of polyketide biosynthetic logic, new computational tools for prospective polyketide synthesis pathways for the creation of existing and novel biochemicals are also outlined. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J , 64: 4201–4207, 2018