One-Pot Cascade Biotransformation for Efficient Synthesis of Benzyl Alcohol and Its Analogs.

One-Pot Cascade Biotransformation for Efficient Synthesis of Benzyl Alcohol and Its Analogs. Chem Asian J. 2020 Feb 04;: Authors: Liu L, Zhu Y, Chen Y, Chen H, Fan C, Mo Q, Yuan J Abstract Benzyl alcohol is a naturally occurring aromatic alcohol and has been widely used in the cosmetics and flavor/fragrance industries. The whole-cell biotransformation for synthesis of benzyl alcohol directly from bio-based L-phenylalanine (L-Phe) was herein explored using an artificial enzyme cascade in Escherichia coli. Benzaldehyde was first produced from L-Phe via four heterologous enzymatic steps that comprises L-amino acid deaminase (LAAD), hydroxymandelate synthase (HmaS), (S)-mandelate dehydrogenase (SMDH) and benzoylformate decarboxylase (BFD). The subsequent reduction of benzaldehyde to benzyl alcohol was achieved by a broad substrate specificity phenylacetaldehyde reductase (PAR) from Solanum lycopersicum. We found the designed enzyme cascade could efficiently convert L-Phe into benzyl alcohol with molar conversion above 99%. In addition, we also examined L-tyrosine (L-Tyr) and m-fluoro-phenylalanine (m-f-Phe) as substrates, the cascade biotransformation could also efficiently produce p-hydroxybenzyl alcohol and m-fluoro-benzyl alcohol. In summary, the developed biocatalytic pathway has great potential to produce various high-valued fine chemicals. PMID: 32017396 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Chemistry, an Asian Journal - Category: Chemistry Authors: Tags: Chem Asian J Source Type: research