Abstract

Polyketide synthases (PKS) produce polyketides, a large group of secondary metabolites produced in bacteria, fungi, plants and certain animal families. PKSs have a huge potential to biosynthesize high-value active pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, biofuels and industrial chemicals, among others. Additionally, they present ideal opportunities to engineer new polyketides, and the latter chemical novelty can result in even better, or at least alternative, active molecules to the existing ones. We present the structure, catalysis and altogether machinery of the PKS, as well as their enzyme engineering and applications in biotechnology. We also briefly discuss the current progress on the study of PKSs by computational chemists, and the fact that PKS reactivity and catalysis remain, presently, almost open fields for the computational chemist to explore.