NADH cofactor, recycling

Ketoreductases (KREDs) are dependent on nicotinamide cofactors NADH or NADPH. Due to the reaction mechanism, these rather costly cofactors are needed in stoichiometric amounts, disclosing an economic problem that has to be dealt with when using these enzymes. Many different possibilities for cofactor recycling have been established with three major approaches finding application in research and industry (Fig. 13). Further regeneration systems, such as electrochemical methods, are not discussed within this review [22-24, 37, 106-108],... 

Commercially available C. boidinii-FDH was used to recycle the NADH cofactor in stereospecific reductions by (/ )-2-hydroxyisocaproate dehydrogenase from L. casei [174]. Enantiomerically pure (R)-2-hydroxy-4-methylpentanoic acid was obtained with 88% yield. The broad substrate specificity of this enzyme enables the synthesis of a broad range of enantiomerically pure ot-hydroxy acids with aliphatic or aromatic side chains. 

An important technical issue is the large-scale applicability of co-factor-dependent enzymatic systems. It is generally accepted that, e.g., NADH-requiring oxidoreductases can easily be used in whole-cell biocatalysis such as baker s yeast-mediated reductions, where the cofactor recycling step is simultaneously performed within the intact cell, driven by the reduction equivalents introduced via the external carbon and energy source (glucose). 

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... 

In a similar exercise with D-methionine, Findrik and Vasic-Racki used the D-AAO of Arthrobacter, and for the second-step conversion of oxoacid into L-amino acid, used L-phenylalanine dehydrogenase (L-PheDH), which has a sufficiently broad specificity to accept L-methionine and its corresponding oxoacid as substrates. Efficient quantitative conversion in this latter reaction requires recycling of the cofactor NAD into NADH, and for this the commercially available formate dehydrogenase (FDH) was used (Scheme 2). 

Pyruvate is initially decarboxylated into ethanal by pyruvate decarboxylase. This enzyme needs magnesium and thiamine pyrophosphate as cofactors (Hohmann 1996). Thereafter, alcohol dehydrogenase reduces ethanal to ethanol, recycling the NADH to NAD+. There are three isoenzymes of alcohol dehydrogenase in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, but isoenzyme I is chiefly responsible for converting ethanal into ethanol (Gancedo 1988). Alcohol dehydrogenase uses zinc as cofactor (Ciriacy 1996). 

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