Benzyl alcohol dehydrogenase from Acinetobacter calcoaceticus oxidises a wide range of aromatic and other cyclic alcohols and it has high specificity constants for these substrates, but it does not oxidise short- or long-chain aliphatic alcohols. Mutation of an active-site arginine to a histidine can switch the substrate specificity of the enzyme so that it has a very much greater preference for perillyl alcohol than for benzyl alcohol.