New microbial alcohol dehydrogenase sources

PAOLA BIANCHI; DARIO BIANCHI; ADOLFO IRIBARREN; ELIZABETH LEWKOWICZ

Buzios

Simposio; BiocatBiotrans2014/1° Simposio Latinoamericano de Biocatalisis y Biotransformaciones; 2014

The synthesis of enantiopure chiral compounds is of great interest for chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Specially, chiral heterocyclic alcohols, which represent part of several biologically active compounds (1,2), are difficult to synthesize stereoselectively using traditional chemical synthesis. Enzymatic ketone reduction is the most used method to obtain optically pure alcohols. The stereoselectivity of the majority of dehydrogenases/reductases involved in these reactions, can be predicted by the Prelog rule producing the (S)-form of the chiral alcohols (3). However, the reduction of ketones to give anti-Prelog chiral alcohols, giving the (R)-enantiomer, has been limited to few enzymes (4). This work involved the screening of new microbial sources, such as bacteria and fungi, to prepare secondary chiral alcohols from the corresponding ketones.