Global food insecurity remains a challenge, with 2.3 billion people worldwide experiencing food insecurity. Applications of synthetic biology offer a promising way to address this crisis through innovative and sustainable enzyme-mediated solutions. This review explores enzymology with food and agriculture systems and how recent advances are aided by synthetic biology. Focusing on how enzymes can be engineered for the greatest good to promote food safety, improved production, and coproduct valorization, we survey state-of-the-art advances in enzyme engineering to achieve these goals, providing a critical review on how technology from other industries could be adapted to food and agriculture. Key areas discussed include biocatalysis of food ingredients, synthetic biology for yield improvements, and computation design of enzymatic pathways for more resource-efficient food processing. This review concludes with a discussion of current limitations, regulations, and future directions for integrating synthetic biology into global food systems.
Su et al. (2026) studied this question.