Biotransformations

Abstract

This report reviews significant developments in applications of biological catalysis in synthetic organic chemistry for the year 2006. During this year, significant progress was made towards the quantitative asymmetric transformation of racemates using hydrolases, in combination with either abiotic or biological racemisation catalysts, in dynamic kinetic resolution processes. New biocatalytic activities have been identified in the form of both novel enzymes from genome screening, and in old enzymes in the form of catalytically promiscuous function, in both acylases and hydroxynitrile lyases. Directed evolution approaches have been refined to focus on the combinatorial saturation mutagenesis of targeted active site residues and applied to both epoxide hydrolases and oxygenases. Important advances in glyco-biocatalysis include the application of the glycosynthase and thioglycoligase techniques to the selective synthesis of carbohydrates and glycoconjugates, and the gram-scale whole cell synthesis of complex sugars using engineered cells of E. coli.