Food and feed is possibly the area where processing anchored in biological agents has the deepest roots. Despite this, process improvement or design and implementation of novel approaches has been consistently performed, and more so in recent years, where significant advances in enzyme engineering and biocatalyst design have fastened the pace of such developments. This paper aims to provide an updated and succinct overview on the applications of enzymes in the food sector, and of progresses made, namely, within the scope of tapping for more efficient biocatalysts, through screening, structural modification, and immobilization of enzymes. Targeted improvements aim at enzymes with enhanced thermal and operational stability, improved specific activity, modification of pH-activity profiles, and increased product specificity, among others. This has been mostly achieved through protein engineering and enzyme immobilization, along with improvements in screening. The latter has been considerably improved due to the implementation of high-throughput techniques, and due to developments in protein expression and microbial cell culture. Expanding screening to relatively unexplored environments (marine, temperature extreme environments) has also contributed to the identification and development of more efficient biocatalysts. Technological aspects are considered, but economic aspects are also briefly addressed.

Enzymes are outstanding (bio)catalysts, not solely on account of their ability to increase reaction rates by up to several orders of magnitude but also for the high degree of substrate specificity, regiospecificity and stereospecificity. The use and development of enzymes as robust biocatalysts is one of the main challenges in biotechnology. However, despite the high specificities and turnover of enzymes, there are also drawbacks. At the industrial level, these drawbacks are typically overcome by resorting to immobilized enzymes to enhance stability. Immobilization of biocatalysts allows their reuse, increases stability, facilitates process control, eases product recovery, and enhances product yield and quality. This is especially important for expensive enzymes, for those obtained in low fermentation yield and with relatively low activity. This review provides an integrated perspective on (multi)enzyme immobilization that abridges a critical evaluation of immobilization methods and carriers, biocatalyst metrics, impact of key carrier features on biocatalyst performance, trends towards miniaturization and detailed illustrative examples that are representative of biocatalytic applications promoting sustainability.