Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry REVIEW

www.rsc.org/obc The battle for the “green ” polymer. Different approaches for biopolymer synthesis: bioadvantaged vs. bioreplacement Nacú Hernández, R. Christopher Williams and Eric W. Cochran* Biopolymers have been used throughout history; however, in the last two centuries they have seen a decrease in their utilization as the proliferation of inexpensive and mass-produced materials from petrochemical feed-stocks quickly became better-suited to meeting society’s needs. In recent years, high petroleum prices and the concern of society to adopt greener and cleaner products has led to an increased interest in biorenew-able polymers and the use of sustainable technologies to produce them. Industrial and academic researchers alike have targeted several routes for producing these renewable materials. In this perspective, we compare and contrast two distinct approaches to the economical realization of these materials. One mentality that has emerged we term “bioreplacement”, in which the fields of synthetic biology and catalysis collaborate to coax petrochemical monomers from sugars and lignocellulosic feedstocks that can subsequently be used in pre-cisely the same ways to produce precisely the same polymers as we know today. For example, the metaboli