Guidelines for reporting of biocatalytic reactions

Applied biocatalysis is the general term for the transformation of natural and non-natural compounds by enzymes for preparative purposes. Because of this, the term biocatalysis is also used to refer to the application of enzymes in chemistry. There is a steadily rising number of publications reporting the use of biocatalysis. Unfortunately, the value of many of these publications is limited because essential information about the experiments is not presented. Recently, the scientific committee of the European Federation of Biotechnology Section on Applied Biocatalysis (ESAB), taking also inspiration from the STRENDA guidelines, prepared and published guidelines for the correct reporting of experiments in biocatalysis. The present manuscript would like to draw attention to some specific relevant experimental issues, which differentiate applied biocatalysis from fundamental enzymology and deserve particular methodological consideration.