[Asymmetric synthesis of aromatic L-amino acids catalyzed by transaminase]

Aromatic L-Amino acids are important chiral building blocks for the synthesis of many drugs, pesticides, fine chemicals and food additives. Due to the high activity and steroselectivity, enzymatic synthesis of chiral building blocks has become the main research direction in asymmetric synthesis field. Guided by the phylogenetic analysis of transaminases from different sources, two representative aromatic transaminases TyrB and Aro8 in type I subfamily, from the prokaryote Escherichia coli and eukaryote Saccharomyces cerevisia, respectively, were applied for the comparative study of asymmetric transamination reaction process and catalytic efficiency of reversely converting keto acids to the corresponding aromatic L-amino acid. Both TyrB and Aro8 could efficiently synthesize the natural aromatic amino acids phenylalanine and tyrosine as well as non-natural amino acid phenylglycine. The chiral HPLC analysis showed the produced amino acids were L-configuration and the e.e value was 100%. L-alanine was the optimal amino donor, and the transaminase TyrB and Aro8 could not use D-amino acids as amino donor. The optimal molar ratio of amino donor (L-alanine) and amino acceptor (aromatic alpha-keto acids) was 4:1. Both of the substituted group on the aromatic ring and the length of fatty acid carbon chain part in the molecular structure of aromatic substrate alpha-keto acid have the significant impact on the enzyme-catalyzed transamination efficiency. In the experiments of preparative-scale transamination synthesis of L-phenylglycine, L-phenylalanine and L-tyrosine, the specific production rate catalyzed by TryB were 0.28 g/(g x h), 0.31 g/(g x h) and 0.60 g/(g x h) and the specific production rate catalyzed by Aro8 were 0.61 g/(g x h), 0.48 g/(g x h) and 0.59 g/(g x h). The results obtained here were useful for applying the transaminases to asymmetric synthesis of L-amino acids by reversing the reaction balance in industry.