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Microbial aldolases as C-C bonding enzymes--unknown treasures and new developments

Anne K Samland1, Georg A Sprenger

  • 1Institut für Mikrobiologie, Universität Stuttgart, Germany.

Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology
|April 15, 2006
PubMed
Summary

Aldolases are enzymes that create carbon-carbon bonds, valuable for synthesizing complex molecules like rare sugars. Microbial aldolases offer diverse applications in asymmetric synthesis and chemoenzymatic chemistry.

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This lesson delves into the aldol condensation catalyzed by bases, where aldols undergo dehydration to enals. As shown in Figure 1, the β-hydroxy aldehyde formed in a base-catalyzed aldol addition reaction dehydrates on heating to yield an unsaturated carbonyl product, which is commonly referred to as an enal.
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