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Abstract Enzymes from secondary metabolic pathways possess broad potential for the selective synthesis of complex bioactive molecules. However, the practical application of these enzymes for organic synthesis is dependent on the development of efficient, economical, operationally simple, and well‐characterized systems for preparative scale reactions. We sought to bridge this knowledge gap for the selective biocatalytic synthesis of β‐hydroxy‐α‐amino acids, which are important synthetic building blocks. To achieve this goal, we demonstrated the ability of ObiH, anl‐threonine transaldolase, to achieve selective milligram‐scale synthesis of a diverse array of non‐standard amino acids (nsAAs) using a scalable whole cell platform. We show how the initial selectivity of the catalyst is high and how the diastereomeric ratio of products decreases at high conversion due to product re‐entry into the catalytic cycle. ObiH‐catalyzed reactions with a variety of aromatic, aliphatic and heterocyclic aldehydes selectively generated a panel of β‐hydroxy‐α‐amino acids possessing broad functional‐group diversity. Furthermore, we demonstrated that ObiH‐generated β‐hydroxy‐α‐amino acids could be modified through additional transformations to access important motifs, such as β‐chloro‐α‐amino acids and substituted α‐keto acids.
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Biomimetic active sites on monolayered metal–organic frameworks for artificial photosynthesis
Enzymes have evolved to catalyse challenging chemical transformations with high efficiency and selectivity. Although a number of artificial systems have been developed to recapitulate the catalytic activity of natural enzymes, they are mostly limited to catalysing relatively simple reactions owing to their ability to mimic only the active metal centres of natural enzymes, without incorporating the proximal amino acids or cofactors. Here we report a metal–organic framework-based artificial enzyme (metal–organic–zyme, MOZ) by integrating active metal centres, proximal amino acids and other cofactors into a tunable metal–organic framework monolayer. We design two libraries of MOZs to perform photocatalytic CO2 reduction and water oxidation reactions. Through tuning the incorporated amino acids in the MOZs, we systematically optimize the activity and selectivity of these libraries. Combining these optimized MOZs into a single system realizes complete artificial photosynthesis in the reaction of (1 + n) CO2 + 2H2O → CH4 + nCO + (2 + n/2)O2.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2102554
- PAR ID:
- 10578486
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Nature
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Nature Catalysis
- Volume:
- 5
- Issue:
- 11
- ISSN:
- 2520-1158
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1006 to 1018
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-022-00865-5
