Enzymatic polymer synthesis: an opportunity for green polymer chemistry.

Polymeric materials, natural and unnatural, are indispensable to the modern society. They are widely used from everyday life usages as commodity materials to industry and technology usages in the fields such as electronics, machinery, communications, transportations, pharmacy, and medicine as highly advanced materials. Today, it is hard to think of the present society without polymeric materials. Developments of various polymeric materials have been owed to epoch-making innovative works as exemplified typically by the discovery of Ziegler-Natta catalyst,1-3 the concept of living polymerization,4 the discovery of conducting polymers,5 and the discovery of metathesis catalyst.6,7 These observations demonstrate that new polymeric materials are often brought about by new production methods including polymerization catalysts. Historically, polymerization catalysts utilized classical catalysts of acids (Brønsted acids, Lewis acids, and various cations), bases (Lewis bases and various anions), and radical generating compounds since the 1920s, the early stage of polymer chemistry. In the following * To whom correspondence should be addressed. Fax/Tel: (+81)-75-7247688. E-mail: kobayash@kit.ac.jp. † Kyoto Institute of Technology and Emeritus Professor of Kyoto University. ‡ Kyoto University. Chem. Rev. 2009, 109, 5288–5353 5288