Indo-U.S. collaborative studies on biocatalytic generation of novel molecular architectures*
Arthur C. Watterson1,‡, Virinder S. Parmar1,3, Rajesh Kumar1,2, Sunil K. Sharma1,2,3, Najam A. Shakil4, Rahul Tyagi2,3, Ajendra K. Sharma1,3, Lynne A. Samuelson2, Jayant Kumar2, Robert Nicolosi1, and Thomas Shea1
1Institute for Nano Science and Engineering Technology, Department of Chemistry, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, MA 01854, USA; 2Center for Advanced Materials, Departments of Chemistry and Physics, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, MA 01854, USA; 3Bioorganic Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, University of Delhi, Delhi 110 007, India; 4Division of Agricultural Chemicals, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi 110 012, India
Abstract: Biocatalytic polymerization reactions on a variety of substrates leading to value-added polymers have been summarized. The main focus of this review is on the control of molecular architecture during enzymatic polymerization reactions. Combined with chemical reactions, several extremely flexible chemo-enzymatic synthetic procedures are described to produce families of new polymeric materials with novel properties. The properties of the synthesized polymers and their applications in various fields, such as drug delivery and flame retardant materials, have also been studied and discussed.
*Paper based on a presentation at the 24th International Symposium on the Chemistry of Natural Products and the 4th International Congress on Biodiversity, held jointly in Delhi, India, 26-31 January 2004. Other presentations are published in this issue, pp. 1-344.