Marked improvement in the asymmetric reduction of 2-hydroxyacetophenone with mut-AcCR in a biphasic system

作者：Wei, Ping; Chao, Peng; Wang, Yao-Ying; Li, Dong-Li; Zou, Qing-Jian; Zong, Min-Hua; Lou, Wen-Yong^*

来源：Molecular Catalysis, 2020, 488: 110903.

DOI：10.1016/j.mcat.2020.110903

• Carbonyl reductase
• Asymmetric reduction
• (S)-1-phenyl-1,2-ethanediol
• Biocatalysis

(S)-1-Phenyl-1,2-ethanediol (PED) is a vital chiral block in specialty chemical industries. The biotransformation of 2-hydroxyacetophenone (2-HAP) to (S)-PED was conducted successfully catalyzed with BL21(DE3)(pETDuet-gst-mut-accr-gdh) which harboring a carbonyl reductase mutant (mut-AcCR). The catalytic activity of the biocatalyst was 15.9 times higher than the recombinant cells harboring original AcCR. 250 mM 2-HAP was reduced, under optimal conditions, and the yield and space-time yield were 95.2 % and 1.89 M/d in the buffer system. Then C4MIMI center dot PF6 was chosen to be the second phase to improve the catalytic efficiency, and the substrate concentration was increased to 450 mM in the C4MIMI center dot PF6/buffer system. After a reaction duration of 3 h, the product yield was over 92 %, and the space-time yield increased to 2.88 M/d which was 1.52 folds higher than that in the buffer system. Also, the product e.e. was over 99 % consistently. Overall, the preparative scale reduction of 2-HAP (450 mM) in C4MIMI center dot PF6/buffer system was conducted with promising result. The developed effective C4MIMI center dot PF6/buffer system of asymmetric reduction catalyzed by BL21(DE3)(pETDuet-gst-mut-accr-gdh) will promote the preparation of the enantiomeric pureity chiral alcohol at industrial scale.