Racemic lactones enantioselective opening

Lipase catalysis is often used for enantioselective production of chiral compounds. Lipase induced the enantioselective ring-opening polymerization of racemic lactones. In the lipase-catalyzed polymerization of racemic (3-BL, the enantioselec-tivity was low an enantioselective polymerization of (3-BL occurred by using thermophilic lipase to give (/ )-enriched PHB with 20-37% enantiomeric excess (ee). ... 

Scheme 18 Enantioselective opening of racemic lactones with alcohols.

Lipase-catalyzed ring-opening polymerization of nine-membered lactone, 8-octanolide (OL), has been reported.165 Lipases CA and PC showed the high catalytic activity for the polymerization. Racemic fluorinated lactones with a ring size from 10 to 14 were enantioselectively polymerized by lipase CA catalyst to give optically active polyesters.166... 

The use of isolated enzymes in organic solvents has already found its niche in organic synthetic laboratories, both in academia and industry (14, 75). Enzymes have emerged as very useful tools for the synthesis of optically active lactones by enantioselective lactonization of racemic yhydroxy esters, cohydroxy esters, and 5-hydroxy esters into enantioenriched y-butyrolactones, colactones, and 5-lactones, respectively (76,77,78). Isolated enzymes, such as lipases (20) and esterases (27) have also been exploited for preparing optically active four-, five- and six-membered lactones by enantioselective ring-opening... 

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