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Updated: Mar 21, 2026

Enzymatic Cascade Reactions for the Synthesis of Chiral Amino Alcohols from L-lysine
Published on: February 16, 2018
General Synthesis of Amino Acid Salts from Amino Alcohols and Basic Water Liberating H2
Peng Hu1, Yehoshoa Ben-David1, David Milstein1
1Department of Organic Chemistry, Weizmann Institute of Science , Rehovot 76100, Israel.
Abstract:
An atom-economical and environmentally friendly method to transform amino alcohols to amino acid salts using just basic water, without the need of pre-protection or added oxidant, catalyzed by a ruthenium pincer complex, is developed. Water is the solvent, the source of the oxygen atom of the carboxylic acid group, and the actual oxidant, with liberation of dihydrogen. Many important and useful natural and unnatural amino acid salts can be produced in excellent yields by applying this new method.
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