Browsing by Author "Reetz, Manfred T."

Regio- and stereoselective oxidative hydroxylation of achiral or chiral organic compounds mediated by synthetic reagents, catalysts, or enzymes generally leads to the formation of one new chiral center that appears in the respective enantiomeric or diastereomeric alcohols. By contrast, when subjecting appropriate achiral compounds to this type of C H activation, the simultaneous creation of two chiral centers with a defined relative and absolute configuration may result, provided that control of the regio-, diastereo-, and enantioselectivity is ensured. The present study demonstrates that such control is possible by using wild type or mutant forms of the monooxygenase cytochrome P450 BM3 as catalysts in the oxidative hydroxylation of methylcyclohexane and seven other monosubstituted cyclohexane derivatives.

Designer cells for a synthetic cascade reaction harnessing selective redox reactions were devised, featuring two successive regioselective P450-catalyzed CH-activating oxidations of 1-cyclohexene carboxylic acid methyl ester followed by stereoselective olefin-reduction catalysed by (R)- or (S)-selective mutants of an enoate reductase.

The achiral cyclohexene derivative dimethyl cis-1,2,3,6-tetrahydrophthalate has been subjected to oxidation catalyzed by cytochrome P450 monooxygenase P450-BM3, leading to diastereoselective epoxidation rather than oxidative hydroxylation. This reaction occurs with 94% diastereoselectivity in favor of the anti-epoxide, in contrast to m-CPBA which delivers unselectively a 70:30 mixture of anti/syn diastereomers. The experimental results are nicely explained on a molecular level by docking experiments and molecular dynamics computations.

Iterative saturation mutagenesis (ISM) in combination with reduced amino acid alphabets has been shown to be an efficient method for directed evolution. In order to minimize the screening effort, the number of residues in a given randomization site has thus far been restricted to two or three; this prevents oversampling from reaching astronomical numbers when 95 % library coverage is aimed for. In this study, ISM is applied for the first time by using randomization sites composed of five amino acid positions. The use of just two such sites (A and B) results in two different ISM pathways, A→B and B→A. A severely reduced amino acid alphabet (only five members) was employed for the building blocks-a minimal set of structurally representative amino acids. The Baeyer-Villiger monooxygenase PAMO was chosen as the enzyme for this proof-of-principle study. The test system employed tuning of activity and diastereoselectivity in the oxidation of 4-(bromomethylidene)cyclohexanone, which is not accepted by wild-type PAMO. Although only 8-9 % library coverage was ensured (as calculated by traditional statistics), notable activity and 99 % diastereoselectivity were obtained, thus indicating that such an ISM strategy is viable in protein engineering.

tDirected evolution of stereoselective enzymes provides a means to generate useful biocatalysts for asym-metric transformations in organic chemistry and biotechnology. Almost all of the numerous examplesreported in the literature utilize high-throughput screening systems based on suitable analytical tech-niques. Since the screening step is the bottleneck of the overall procedure, researchers have consideredthe use of genetic selection systems as an alternative to screening. In principle, selection would be themost elegant and efficient approach because it is based on growth advantage of host cells harboring ste-reoselective mutants, but devising such selection systems is very challenging. They must be designed sothat the host organism profits from the presence of an enantioselective variant. Progress in this intrigu-ing research area is summarized in this review, which also includes some examples of display systemsdesigned for enantioselectivity as assayed by fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). Although thecombination of display systems and FACS is a powerful approach, we also envision innovative ideascombining metabolic engineering and genetic selection systems with protein directed evolution for thedevelopment of highly selective and efficient biocatalysts.

Catalytic asymmetric reduction of prochiral ketones of type 4-alkylidene cyclohexanone with formation of the corresponding axially chiral R-configurated alcohols (up to 99% ee) was achieved using alcohol dehydrogenases, whereas chiral transition-metal catalysts fail. Reversal of enantioselectivity proved to be possible by directed evolution based on saturation mutagenesis (up to 98% ee (S)). Utilization of ketone with a vinyl bromide moiety allows respective R- and S-alcohols to be exploited as key compounds in Pd-catalyzed cascade reactions.

Wild-type P450-BM3 is able to catalyze in a highly regio- and diastereoselective manner the oxidative hydroxylation of non-activated disubstituted cyclohexane derivatives lacking any functional groups, including cis- and trans-1,2-dimethylcyclohexane, cis- and trans-1,4-dimethylcyclohexane, and trans-1,4-methylisopropylcyclohexane. In all cases except chiral trans-1,2-dimethylcyclohexane as substrate, the single hydroxylation event at a methylene group induces desymmetrization with simultaneous creation of three centers of chirality. Certain mutants increase selectivity, setting the stage for future directed evolution work.

The selective partial oxidation of small non-functionalized molecules using biocatalysis based on P450 monooxygenases is known to be difficult due to the expected poor regio- and stereoselectivity, but in this study it was nevertheless attempted. 1-Methylcyclohexene was subjected to oxygen-mediated bio catalytic oxidation using P450-BM3 as the catalyst. Both oxidative hydroxylation and epoxidation were observed, in some cases leading to hydroxy epoxides with high diastereo- and enantioselectivity espe cially when employing BM3 mutants.