• Question: what types of catalyst do u work with, chemical or biological, and what are there names? sorry about spellings

    Asked by smeley to Rob, Luke, John on 20 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Robert Williams

      Robert Williams answered on 20 Jun 2016:

      I work with a wide variety of catalysts. For commercial reasons I cannot give exact details, but here is a summary:
      1) Biological – genetically profiled enzymes based on a world leading expression technology – these allow the isolation of a single isomer product from a racaemic mixture of starting material
      2) Metallocene based catalysts for hydrogenation and other chemical transformations
      3) Redox catalysts based on Vitamin B6 complexes

    • Photo: Luke Williams

      Luke Williams answered on 21 Jun 2016:

      I only work with enzymes – I have been locating new enzymes from the species Geobacillus thermoglucosidasius. In particular I have found several alcohol dehydrogenases and two aldo-keto reductases. Due to a healthy dose of luck, several of them are biologically interesting due to their rarity and they may well become industrially useful in the future.

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