Alcohol enzymatic formation

Fig. 11.11. Enzymatic formation mechanism of aldehydes and Ce alcohols, responsible for grassy flavors (Crouzet, 1986). (1) [Acyl]hydrolase (2) lipoxygenase in the presence of oxygen (3) peroxide cleavage enz3me (4) alcohol dehydrogenase...

The conventional electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide tends to give formic acid as the major product, which can be obtained with a 90% current efficiency using, for example, indium, tin, or mercury cathodes. Being able to convert CO2 initially to formates or formaldehyde is in itself significant. In our direct oxidation liquid feed fuel cell, varied oxygenates such as formaldehyde, formic acid and methyl formate, dimethoxymethane, trimethoxymethane, trioxane, and dimethyl carbonate are all useful fuels. At the same time, they can also be readily reduced further to methyl alcohol by varied chemical or enzymatic processes. 

In keeping with its biogenetic origin m three molecules of acetic acid mevalonic acid has six carbon atoms The conversion of mevalonate to isopentenyl pyrophosphate involves loss of the extra carbon as carbon dioxide First the alcohol hydroxyl groups of mevalonate are converted to phosphate ester functions—they are enzymatically phosphorylated with introduction of a simple phosphate at the tertiary site and a pyrophosphate at the primary site Decarboxylation m concert with loss of the terti ary phosphate introduces a carbon-carbon double bond and gives isopentenyl pyrophos phate the fundamental building block for formation of isoprenoid natural products... 

An enzymatic process using partially purified pyruvate decarboxylase (PDC) with added pyruvate overcomes the problems of benzyl alcohol formation and limiting availability of pyruvate [3]. As a result increased concentrations, yields and productivities of PAC were achieved with concentrations of PAC in excess of 50 g f (330 mM) in 28 h and yields on benzaldehyde above 95% theoretical [4-6]. Screening of a wide range of bacteria, yeasts and other fungi as potential sources of stable, high activity PDC for production of PAC confirmed a strain of the yeast Candida utilis as the most suitable source of PDC [7]. 

A classical approach to driving the unfavorable equilibrium of an enzymatic process is to couple it to another, irreversible enzymatic process. Griengl and coworkers have applied this concept to asymmetric synthesis of 1,2-amino alcohols with a threonine aldolase [24] (Figure 6.7). While the equilibrium in threonine aldolase reactions typically does not favor the synthetic direction, and the bond formation leads to nearly equal amounts of two diastereomers, coupling the aldolase reaction with a selective tyrosine decarboxylase leads to irreversible formation of aryl amino alcohols in reasonable enantiomeric excess via a dynamic kinetic asymmetric transformation. A one-pot, two-enzyme asymmetric synthesis of amino alcohols, including noradrenaline and octopamine, from readily available starting materials was developed [25]. 

Kragl and Wandrey made a comparison for the asymmetric reduction of acetophenone between oxazaborolidine and alcohol dehydrogenase.[59] The oxazaborolidine catalyst was bound to a soluble polystyrene [58] and used borane as the hydrogen donor. The carbonyl reductase was combined with formate dehydrogenase to recycle the cofactor NADH which acts as the hydrogen donor. Both systems were run for a number of residence times in a continuously operated membrane reactor and were directly comparable. With the chemical system, a space-time yield of 1400 g L"1 d"1 and an ee of 94% were reached whereas for the enzymatic system the space-time yield was 88 g L 1 d"1 with an ee of >99%. The catalyst half-life times were... 

The same authors proposed a complex system for the electrochemically driven enzymatic reduction of carbon dioxide to form methanol. In this case, methyl viologen or the cofactor PQQ were used as mediators for the electroenzymatic reduction of carbon dioxide to formic acid catalyzed by formate dehydrogenase followed by the electrochemically driven enzymatic reduction of formate to methanol catalyzed by a PQQ-dependent alcohol dehydrogenase. With methyl viologen as mediator, the reaction goes through the intermediate formation of formaldehyde while with PQQ, methanol is formed directly [77],... 

The three-step procedure described for the preparation of the illustrated crotylsilanes is initiated with the hydrosilation of rac-3-butyn-2-ol. This procedure is significantly improved with respect to the positional selectivity of the hydrosilation resulting in exclusive formation of the racemic (E)-vinylsilane, and as a result the present procedure is much more amenable to scale-up than those previously described in the literature.8 The enzymatic resolution of the racemic secondary allylic alcohol (vinylsilane) has also been reported using commercially available lipase extracts. The use of a Johnson ortho ester Claisen rearrangement affords the (E)-crotylsilanes 4 in nearly enantiomerically pure form. 

Our final example is that of cyclic anhydrides, namely prochiral 3-sub-stituted glutaric anhydrides (7.101, R = Me, Et, or Pr). When incubated with lipase in an inert solvent in the presence of an alcohol (methanol, butan-l-ol, etc.), these compounds underwent nucleophilic ring opening with formation of a hemiester (7.102) of (/ -configuration (60-90% ee) [180]. This product enantioselectivity and, of course, the lack of reactivity in the absence of lipase show the enzymatic nature of the reaction. 

A practical enzymatic procedure using alcalase as biocatalyst has been developed for the synthesis of hydrophilic peptides.Alcalase is an industrial alkaline protease from Bacillus licheniformis produced by Novozymes that has been used as a detergent and for silk degumming. The major enzyme component of alcalase is the serine protease subtilisin Carlsberg, which is one of the fully characterized bacterial proteases. Alcalase has better stability and activity in polar organic solvents, such as alcohols, acetonitrile, dimethylformamide, etc., than other proteases. In addition, alcalase has wide specificity and both l- and o-amino acids that are accepted as nucleophiles at the p-1 subsite. Therefore, alcalase is a suitable biocatalyst to catalyse peptide bond formation in organic solvents under kinetic control without any racemization of the amino acids (Scheme 5.1). 

The mechanism was confirmed by enzymatic experiments [20, 21]. A crude enzyme preparation from A. officinalis cultured cells catalyzed the conversion of j9-coumaryl alcohol and j9-coumaroyl CoA to (Z)-hinokiresinol [20], while a crude enzyme preparation from Cryptomeria japonica cultured cells mediated the formation of ( )-hinokiresinol from the same substrates [21]. In addition, both enzyme preparations converted j9-coumaryl j9-coumarate into (Z)-hinokiresinol and ( )-hinokiresinol [20, 21]. Thus, the biosynthesis of hinokiresinol originating from phenylpropanoid monomers was established. 

Several enzymatic procedures have been developed for the synthesis of carbohydrates from acyclic precursors. Aldolases appear to be useful catalysts for the construction of sugars through asymmeteric C-C bond formation. 2-deoxy-KDO, 2-deoxy-2-fluoro-KDO, 9-0-acetyl sialic acid and several unusual sugars were prepared by a combined chemical and enzymatic approach. Alcohol dehydrogenases and lipases have been used in the preparation of chiral furans, hydroxyaldehydes, and glycerol acetonide which are useful as building blocks in carbohydrate synthesis. 

---