Biocatalytic with dehydrogenases

Organometallic aldehydes can be reduced enantioselectively with dehydrogenases. For example, optically active organometallic compounds having planar chiralities were obtained by biocatalytic reduction of racemic aldehydes with yeast [22c,d] or HLADH [22e] as shown in Figure 8.29. 

Simon et al. [92] investigated a biocatalytic anode based on lactate oxidation by lactate dehydrogenase (LDH). The anodic current is generated by the oxidation of NADH (produced by NAD+ and substrate) while LDH catalyzes the electro-oxidation of lactate into pyruvate. As previously mentioned, the oxidation of NADH at bare electrodes requires a large overpotential, so these authors used poly(aniline) films doped with polyanions to catalyze NADH oxidation. Subsequent research by this group focused on targeting mutants of LDH that are amenable to immobilization on the polyaniline surface [93],... 

Enzyme reductions of carbonyl groups have important applications in the synthesis of chiral compounds (as described in Chapter 10). Dehydrogenases are enzymes that catalyse, for example, the reduction of carbonyl groups they require co-factors as their co-substrates. Dehydrogenase-catalysed transformations on a practical scale can be performed with purified enzymes or with whole cells, which avoid the use of added expensive co-factors. Bakers yeast is the whole cell system most often used for the reduction of aldehydes and ketones. Biocatalytic activity can also be used to reduce carbon carbon double bonds. Since the enzymes for this reduction are not commercially available, the majority of these experiments were performed with bakers yeast1 41. 

Numerous biocatalytic routes to this challenging intermediate have been reported. " For example. Fox et al. have recently developed an efficient regioselective cyanation starting from low-cost epichlorohydrin (Scheme 1.26). Initial experiments found that halohydrin dehydrogenase from Agrobacterium radiobacter expressed in E. coli produced the desired product, but inefficiently. To meet the projected cost requirements for economic viability, the product needed to be produced at 100 g L with complete conversion and a 4000-fold increase in volumetric productivity. The biocatalyst needed to function under neutral conditions to avoid by-product formation, which causes downstream processing issues. 

An additional condition may be imposed, even when a cofactor-independent enzyme is used, if a mediator molecule is involved in the electron transfer process, as is often the case with oxidases. Laccases, for example, may employ small-molecule diffusible mediator compounds in their redox cycle to shuttle electrons between the redox center of the enzyme and the substrate or electrode (Scheme 3.1) [1, 2]. Similarly, certain dehydrogenases utiHze pyrroloquinoline quinone. In biocatalytic systems, mediators based on metal complexes are often used. 

The simple cases where one enzyme is employed afford a limited scope of potential targets. Usually two or more enzyme reactions are coupled, as exemplified by the development of a piezoelectrically-transduced biocatalytic biosensor that couples two enzyme reactions to detect glucose [492-62-6], C6H120 > (3) (13). In this biosensor a quartz radio crystal is functionalized with the enzyme glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase. As shown in Figure 3, a thin film of Prussian blue [14038 43-8], C18N18Fe7, is then coated onto the crystal. 

Biocatalytic synthetic reactions also include carbon dioxide fixation with the production of methanol in artificial multi-enzyme systems [188]. Formate dehydrogenase (FDH, EC 1.2.1.2) can catalyze the reduction of carbon dioxide to formate, and methanol dehydrogenase (MDH, EC 1.1.99.8) can catalyze the reduction of formate to methanol. Both of these enzymes require NAD+-NADE1 cofactor, and in the presence of the reduced dimethyl viologen mediator (MV+), they can drive a sequence of enzymatic reactions. The cascade of biocatalytic reactions results in the reduction of CO2 to formate catalyzed by FDEI followed by the reduction of formate to methanol catalyzed by MDH. A more complex system composed of immobilized cells of Parococcus denitrificans has been demonstrated for the reduction of nitrate and nitrite [189]. 

Using an L-amino acid dehydrogenase in the presence of a formate dehydrogenase for cofactor regeneration, a prochiral keto acid is converted with high yield and en-antioselectivity. Furthermore, biocatalytic transaminations as well as Michael-addi-tions are important reactions for the large-scale synthesis of L-amino acids. 

The c/s-dihydroxylation reaction catalyzed by these dioxygenases is typically highly enantioselective (often >98% ee) and, as a result, has proven particularly useful as a source of chiral synthetic intermediates (2,4). Chiral cis-dihydrodiols have been made available commercially and a practical laboratory procedure for the oxidation of chlorobenzene to IS, 2S)-3-chlorocyclohexa-3,5-diene-l,2-c diol by a mutant strain of Pseudomonas putida has been published (6). Transformation with whole cells can be achieved either by mutant strains that lack the second enzyme in the aromatic catabolic pathway, cw-dihydrodiol dehydrogenase (E.C. 1.3.1.19), or by recombinant strains expressing the cloned dioxygenase. This biocatalytic process is scalable, and has been used to synthesize polymer precursors such as 3-hydroxyphenylacetylene, an intermediate in the production of acetylene-terminated resins (7). A synthesis of polyphenylene was developed by ICI whereby ftie product of enzymatic benzene dioxygenation, c/s-cyclohexa-3,5-diene-1,2-diol, was acetylated and polymerized as shown in Scheme 2 (8). 

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