FUNCTIONAL GROUP TRANSFORMATIONS MEDIATED BY WHOLE CELLS AND STRATEGIES FOR THE EFFICIENT SYNTHESIS OF OPTICALLY PURE CHIRAL INTERMEDIATES

摘要

The use of whole cells, as opposed to isolated enzymes, has proven to be extremely effective for certain types of biotransformations, especially cofactor dependent processes such as oxidation and reduction. We have investigated whole cell reactions for effecting ⅰ) nitro group reduction ⅱ) carbonyl reduction ⅲ) C=C reduction and ⅳ) nitrile hydrolysis. For each of these transformations the following topics have been addressed; substrate range, type of selectivity displayed e.g. regio, stereo, chemo-, mechanistic aspects of the reactions, applications to the synthesis of biologically active molecules and lastly scale-up issues.