Enzymatic synthesis substrates

Dica.rboxyIic AcidMonoesters. Enzymatic synthesis of monoesters of dicarboxyUc acids by hydrolysis of the corresponding diesters is a widely used and thoroughly studied reaction. It is catalyzed by a number of esterases. Upases, and proteases and is usually carried out in an aqueous buffer, pH 6—8 at room temperature. Organic cosolvents may be added to increase solubiUty of the substrates. The pH is maintained at a constant level by the addition of aqueous hydroxide. After one equivalent of base is consumed the monoesters are isolated by conventional means. 

Enzyme preparations from liver or microbial sources were reported to show rather high substrate specificity [76] for the natural phosphorylated acceptor d-(18) but, at much reduced reaction rates, offer a rather broad substrate tolerance for polar, short-chain aldehydes [77-79]. Simple aliphatic or aromatic aldehydes are not converted. Therefore, the aldolase from Escherichia coli has been mutated for improved acceptance of nonphosphorylated and enantiomeric substrates toward facilitated enzymatic syntheses ofboth d- and t-sugars [80,81]. High stereoselectivity of the wild-type enzyme has been utilized in the preparation of compounds (23) / (24) and in a two-step enzymatic synthesis of (22), the N-terminal amino acid portion of nikkomycin antibiotics (Figure 10.12) [82]. 

Activated esters of halogenated alcohols, such as 2-chloroethanol, 2,2,2-trifluoroethanol, and 2,2,2-trichloroethanol, have been often used as substrate for enzymatic synthesis of esters, owing to an increase in the electrophilicity (reactivity) of the acyl carbonyl and avoid significant alcoholysis of the products by decreasing the nucleophilicity of the leaving alcohols. ... 

Highly selective enzymatic synthesis using glycosyltransferases (GTFs), an approach restricted by the limited availability of Leloir-type enzymes, and expensive nucleotide-activated substrates... 

Fig. 8. Different products with sucrose analogues as substrates.115 Enzymatic synthesis of 1-kestose, 1-nystose, and their analogues by /(-fructofuranosidase of A. niger. Structures of fructo-oligosaccharides (A) commercial products, (B) mannose- (C) galactose-, and (D) xylose-substituted analogues.

To make these substrates suitable for biological assays, the introduction of functional groups that can be traced with the proper analytical techniques is essential. The use of radio-, fluorescent-, and biotin-labeled lipidated peptides has been reported. The synthesis of fluorescent substrates is chemically straightforward and allows for production of larger quantities than the enzymatic synthesis used for radiolabeled peptides and is thus preferred over the use of radioactive compounds. [1 21] Common fluorescent probes can be introduced by conjugation to a free functional group present in the peptide. The fluorescent moiety is... 

Enzymatic synthesis in reaction mixtures with mainly undissolved substrates and/or products is a synthetic strategy in which the compounds are present mostly as pure solids [28, 29]. It retains the main advantages of conventional enzymatic synthesis such as high regio- and stereoselectivity, absence of racemization, and reduced side-chain protection. When product precipitates, the reaction yields are improved, so that the necessity to use organic solvents to shift the thermodynamic equilibrium toward synthesis is reduced and synthesis is made favorable even in water. 

For charged products the situation is significantly different. For many reactions involving zwitterions, the presence of undissolved substrates did not lead to precipitated products in enzymatic synthesis reactions [11]. These observations are related to differences in the solubility properties of zwitterions as compared to acids, bases, or uncharged compounds. Because of the low concentration of the... 

This approach can be extended by working in highly condensed systems formed with mainly undissolved substrates for the enzymatic synthesis of ampicilhn and cephalexin, where the reaction mixture had no aqueous phase for dispersion of the reagents, and no organic solvents were used. The absence of an apparent aqueous phase in the reaction mixture reduces the incidence of the hydrolytic reaction [86-87]. 

The application of SCF as reaction media for enzymatic synthesis has several advantages, such as the higher initial reaction rates, higher conversion, possible separation of products from unreacted substrates, over solvent-free, or solvent systems (where either water or organic solvents are used). Owing to the lower mass-transfer limitations and mild (temperature) reaction conditions, at first the reactions which were performed in non-aqueous systems will be transposed to supercritical media. An additional benefit of using SCFs as... 

Enzymatic synthesis relying on the use of aldolases offers several advantages. As opposed to chemical aldolization, aldolases usually catalyze a stereoselective aldol reaction under mild conditions there is no need for protection of functional groups and no cofactors are required. Moreover, whereas high specificity is reported for the donor substrate, broad flexibility toward the acceptor is generally observed. Finally, aldolases herein discussed do not use phosphorylated substrates, contrary to phosphoenolpyruvate-dependent aldolases involved in vivo in the biosynthetic pathway, such as KDO synthetase or DAHP synthetase [18,19]. 

The subprocesses, such as dissolution/crystallization of substrates and products, enzymatic synthesis of the product(s), undesired enzymatic hydrolysis of substrates and/or products, and deactivation, often influence the pH value and are influenced in turn by it as the reactants are weak electrolytes. 

On the other hand, the enzymatic synthesis of glycoconjugates and oligosaccharides leads to high product yields in a short time by stereo- and regioselective one-step reactions. All enzymatic reactions are easy to scale up and are carried out in aqueous media under mild conditions. A whole set of enzymes is now available to build up OAT bonds in monosaccharides, COP bonds in activated monosaccharides e.g. phosphorylated sugars or nucleotide sugars, and C-O-C bonds in di- and oligosaccharides (Fig. 1). However, all these enzymatic reactions are limited by the substrate spectrum of the individual enzyme. 

GDP-ot-D-mannose (23) is the donor substrate for mannosyltransferases [139, 146, 338-340] and the precursor of GDP-(3-L-fucose (13) [173,197, 243, 341], Based on the work of Munch-Petersen [342, 343], only crude extracts from yeast have been used for the enzymatic synthesis of labeled and unlabeled 23 and GDP-deoxymannose derivatives (Table 4) [303-305, 307, 308, 344-346] as well as for the in situ regeneration of 23 (Table 4). Common to all these approaches is the use of chemically synthesized sugar-1-phosphates as substrates for GDP-Man PP. An obvious disadvantage of using crude yeast enzyme preparations is the poor quality of the enzyme source since only fresh cells or certain batches of baker s yeast are suitable for synthesis [304, 307], GDP-Man PP was purified from pig liver and used for the synthesis of 8-Azido-GDP-Man however, the enzyme lacks absolute specificity for GDP-Man in the pyrophos-phorylysis reaction [309]. 

---