Halogenases for biosynthetic pathway engineering: Toward new routes to naturals and non-naturals

This paper explores the implications for international development policy and practice - specifically within the sectors of building security and justice after conflict - of the departure of those assuming caring roles, predominantly women who become mothers. More broadly, this paper explores how personal life stories impact the choices we make in our professional lives, including where, when and how we engage, in this instance, in international development, and the subsequent implications for the field. These choices (the personal) have an impact on policy and practice (the professional), and inform how knowledge is created, circulated, legitimised and becomes expert knowledge (the political). This paper thus explores the implications of an epistemic community being predominantly male (in part as a consequence of the lack of support for social reproductive work) on how security and justice in post-conflict environments are conceived and, ultimately, rebuilt. The authors reflect upon their engagement in conflict-affected environments – Nature’s repertoire of bio-halogenase enzymes is intriguing with halogenases from various natural product biosynthetic clusters that carry out site and regio specific halogenation of diverse bioactive precursors and molecules. Currently, we have a comprehensive catalogue of cryptic and non-cryptic halogenases that act on simple to complex aliphatic and aromatic molecular scaffolds. This will open up further synthetic and biosynthetic opportunities for C-H activation, ring formation and functionalization of different molecular structures. In fact, halogenases were exploited over the years for these potential applications, to replace traditional chemical halogenation chemistries towards creating economical and environmentally benign methodologies and also for biosynthetic pathways. This review will discuss our advances in utilizing bio-halogenases to generate both in vivo and in vitro biosynthetic pathways; summarizing all naturals and non-naturals that are synthesized with a direct bio-halogenase incorporation.