Industrial enzymes: Green manufacturing biocatalysts, AI dry-wet closed-loop reshaping local industry patterns

With the deep implementation of the dual-carbon strategy and the shift of industrial production toward green and low-carbon processes, traditional high-energy-consumption and high-pollution chemical catalytic processes are undergoing a systematic transformation. As a cornerstone of the biomanufacturing industry, industrial enzymes, with their core characteristics of efficient catalysis, mild reactions, and green low-energy use, have become the key technology for replacing traditional chemical processes and enabling green upgrades across the entire industry, spanning dozens of core industrial scenarios including food processing, light industry textiles, biomedicine, and environmental management.

Unlike the commonly known concept of biological enzymes, industrial enzymes are functional protein catalysts specifically adapted for large-scale industrial production through microbial fermentation, molecular modification, extraction and purification, and formulation processing. Compared to traditional chemical catalysts, industrial enzymes significantly reduce dependence on harsh reaction conditions such as high temperature, high pressure, or strong acids and bases, and they achieve lower energy consumption, fewer by-products, and higher reaction specificity, establishing a whole new industrial production technology system. They are a core supporting industry for the green industrial economy in the 21st century.

1. The technology system of industrial enzymes: classification and core catalytic principles

 Industrial enzymes

From a biochemical perspective, industrial enzymes can be divided into four core categories according to their catalytic functions: hydrolases, oxidoreductases, isomerases, and transferases, covering most of the reaction needs in industrial production. Among these, hydrolases have the highest usage, with a market penetration exceeding 60%. This category includes amylases, proteases, cellulases, and pectinases, which are mainly used for breaking down macromolecular substrates, making them the mainstream enzymes in the food and textile industries. High-end enzymes like oxidoreductases and transferases mainly focus on high-value fields such as biopharmaceuticals and fine chemicals.

The core working principle of industrial enzymes is that they specifically bind to substrate molecules, greatly lowering the activation energy of chemical reactions, allowing reactions to proceed efficiently under normal temperature, pressure, and mild pH conditions. The main advantages include: highly efficient catalysis, with reaction rates 10⁸~10²⁰ times higher than non-catalyzed reactions and 10⁷~10¹³ times higher than traditional chemical catalysts, which significantly shortens production cycles and improves capacity utilization; strong substrate specificity, catalyzing only specific molecular structures with no unwanted side reactions, increasing raw material conversion rates by 10%~30% compared to traditional chemical processes, with some reactions approaching theoretical maximum conversion rates; green, safe, and biodegradable, as enzymes themselves are biodegradable proteins, and the production process reduces heavy metal and hazardous waste emissions by over 90% compared to traditional chemical methods, significantly enhancing environmental friendliness.

2. Industry Status: A Billion-Yuan Track Continues to Expand, Domestic Substitution Accelerates

With global green manufacturing policies intensifying and synthetic biology technology iterating and upgrading, the industrial enzyme industry has entered a period of rapid growth. According to industry data, the global industrial enzyme market is expected to reach $7.66 billion in 2025, $8.19 billion in 2026, and is likely to exceed $10.39 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 6.2% from 2026 to 2030. The Chinese market leads growth in the Asia-Pacific region, with the domestic industrial enzyme market projected to reach RMB 25.2 billion in 2025, steadily increasing its share of the global market.

From an application perspective, the food and beverage industry is the largest user of industrial enzymes, accounting for about 30% of the market, followed by feed, textiles, biopharmaceuticals, and environmental water treatment. Currently, over 80,000 enzymes have been identified globally, but only about 60 have achieved large-scale industrial application. Including special customized enzymes, over 200 commercial enzyme types are available. Notably, by 2026, the domestic feed enzyme market will be nearly 100% localized, while reliance on imported high-end specialty enzymes for pharmaceutical synthesis and in vitro diagnostics exceeds 70%, representing a key bottleneck in the industry.

3. All-Scenario Empowerment: How Industrial Enzymes Are Reshaping Modern Industrial Production Systems

 An Overview of the Four Core Applications of Industrial Enzymes

The core value of industrial enzymes lies in using biocatalysis technology to restructure traditional industrial processes, achieving fourfold benefits: cost reduction, quality improvement, energy saving, and carbon reduction, fully empowering the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries:

3.1. Food and Feed Industry: Improve quality and efficiency, optimize cost structure

As the most mature application scenario, amylases and glucoamylases are widely used in starch syrup, brewing, and baking, increasing raw material conversion rates by 10%-20%. Phytases, as key feed enzymes, can break down anti-nutritional factors in feed, enhance the absorption of phosphorus in livestock and poultry, and reduce the use of feed additives and pollution from farming.

3.2. Light Industry, Textiles, and Paper: Green alternatives, reduce process pollution

The textile industry uses α-amylase for desizing and pectinase for scouring, replacing traditional strong-alkali high-temperature processes, which can reduce wastewater COD emissions by over 30%. In the paper industry, cellulase and laccase improve pulp properties, increasing paper strength while reducing the use of chemical bleaches, enabling cleaner production.

3.3. Biopharmaceuticals and Fine Chemicals: Precise catalysis, break technological barriers

High-end transferases, isomerases, and oxidoreductases are used in the synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients and chiral compounds. With their ultra-high substrate specificity, they precisely control reaction direction, greatly enhance the purity of target products, and address industry pain points such as excessive by-products, difficult purification, and severe pollution in traditional chemical synthesis.

3.4. Environmental Protection and New Energy: Expand boundaries, empower new tracks

With the development of a low-carbon economy, industrial enzyme applications are continually expanding. Plastic-degrading enzymes can efficiently break down high-molecular plastics like PET, contributing to solid waste recycling. Carbon-capturing enzymes can efficiently fix and convert CO₂, providing new technological pathways for industrial carbon reduction, becoming an emerging growth hotspot in the industry.

4. Technological Innovation: AI-Driven Breakthroughs to Solve Industrial Enzyme R&D Bottlenecks

Traditional industrial enzyme R&D relies on trial and error, taking years from enzyme discovery and molecular engineering to large-scale production, with a low success rate for high-end functional enzyme modifications. However, the deep integration of AI technology and protein engineering is changing this situation — moving from "natural screening" to "data-driven closed-loop design."

Currently, AI-driven enzyme engineering has moved from academic research to industrial applications. In July 2026, the International Bioenergy Research Center publicly verified that an AI automated casting platform modified two industrial enzymes, boosting catalytic activity by 16 times and 26 times respectively, while cutting the R&D cycle by over 70%. The core process involves AI tools searching known enzyme structure datasets, suggesting sequence modifications, and an automated platform completing protein construction and functional testing, with the data feeding back to drive the next iteration — this is what the industry calls a "dry-wet closed loop."

Another notable platform is Matwings Tech's self-developed MatwingsVenus™ (Xiaowu™) conversational protein R&D intelligent platform, which has built a dry-wet closed-loop R&D system of "AI intelligent design — automated wet experiments — industrial implementation iteration." Users can make requests in natural language (like "improve the thermal stability of a certain enzyme"), and the AI agent automatically breaks down the task, schedules protein design tools to complete the design, and directly interfaces with the automated experiment platform for sample preparation and functional testing, with data automatically feeding back for iteration. The platform has already accumulated a number of practical projects in the industrial enzyme field.

Three Key Case Studies of Industrial AI Enzymes in Practice

Case 1: Plastic-Degrading Enzymes — A New Solution for Circular Economy

Natural PET-degrading enzymes have low efficiency and poor stability under industrial conditions. The MatwingsVenus™ platform uses AI-assisted multi-objective directed evolution on PET-degrading enzymes, simultaneously optimizing multiple features like thermal stability, catalytic activity, and acid/base resistance. In just six months, it designed highly efficient plastic-degrading enzymes, far surpassing the development timeline of traditional methods. Once scaled up, these enzymes could enable a closed loop for waste PET plastic: "raw material → product → waste → degradation → regeneration."

Case 2: Diagnostic Tool Enzymes — Breaking the Import Monopoly

Key tool enzymes in in vitro diagnostic reagents have long been monopolized by international suppliers. For the synthesis enzyme of EPS-G7, a core raw material for pancreatitis diagnosis, a domestic team used AI for multi-objective directed evolution of cyclodextrin glucanotransferase — boosting transglycosylation activity, reducing hydrolysis activity, and enhancing regioselectivity all at once. Just one round of model prediction identified the optimal triple-point mutation, increasing the catalytic synthesis product ratio from 63% to 98%, achieving domestic replacement for the core raw material.

Case 3: Food Functional Enzymes — Boosting Sweetness and Stability

The sweet protein Monellin is thousands of times sweeter than sucrose, but its natural form is poorly heat-stable, limiting industrial use. The MatwingsVenus™ platform applied multiple rounds of “AI design → automated experiments → data feedback” iteration, eventually producing several designs with sweetness tens of times higher than the wild type, with heat resistance stable around 75°C. These can now be used in heat-processed scenarios like baking.

A common feature of these cases is the tight coupling of AI and automated experiments, forming a "design—validate—iterate" loop. In traditional methods, computational design and experimental validation are disconnected — sequences are designed, outsourced for experiments, and results take weeks before the next round of analysis, making an iteration cycle 1–2 months long. The closed-loop platform integrates this process: researchers focus on scientific questions, AI handles design, robots handle experiments, and data automatically feeds back for iteration.

5. The Future of the Industry: Industrial Enzymes Usher in a New Era of Biomanufacturing

Looking at industry development trends, industrial enzymes are expected to follow three main directions in the future: First, maximizing enzyme performance—using AI-driven directed evolution, gene editing, and other technologies to develop industrial enzymes that are tolerant to extreme temperatures and strong acids or bases, highly catalytic, and stable, suitable for tougher industrial production scenarios. Second, enzyme system integration—moving from single enzyme applications to composite enzyme systems for synergistic catalysis, meeting the diverse needs of complex industrial processes. Third, a broader application landscape—continuously expanding into emerging fields such as environmental degradation, carbon capture, bioenergy, and health, opening up new growth opportunities for the industry.

Driven by both carbon neutrality policies and industrial upgrading, industrial enzymes, as a core technology for green manufacturing, are gradually replacing traditional chemical processes and becoming key tools for reducing carbon emissions and improving efficiency, as well as optimizing industrial structures. The deep integration of AI and synthetic biology will keep breaking down the technical and industrial barriers of industrial enzymes, helping the domestic industrial enzyme sector leap from "following" to "leading," injecting essential biological power into the industry’s green and low-carbon transformation.

6. Conclusion

Industrial enzymes are not just simple industrial additives—they are core catalysts that reshape modern industrial production systems. With the continuous iteration of AI protein design technology and the maturation of domestic industrial capabilities, industrial enzymes will penetrate even more industrial niches, becoming a key support for China's manufacturing transition to greener, higher-end, and smarter production, opening up a whole new path for the industrialization of biomanufacturing.