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Updated: Feb 16, 2026
Enzymatic Cascade Reactions for the Synthesis of Chiral Amino Alcohols from L-lysine
Published on: February 16, 2018
Recent advances in enzymatic oxidation of alcohols
1Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, 4 Engineering Drive 4, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117585, Singapore.
Abstract:
Enzymatic alcohol oxidation plays an important role in chemical synthesis. In the past two years, new alcohol oxidation enzymes were developed through genome-mining and protein engineering, such as new copper radical oxidases with broad substrate scope, alcohol dehydrogenases with altered cofactor preference and a flavin-dependent alcohol oxidase with enhanced oxygen coupling. New cofactor recycling methods were reported for alcohol dehydrogenase-catalyzed oxidation with photocatalyst and coupled glutaredoxin-glutathione reductase as promising examples. Different alcohol oxidation systems were used for the oxidation of primary and secondary alcohols, especially in the cascade conversion of alcohols to lactones, lactams, chiral amines, chiral alcohols and hydroxyketones. Among them, biocatalyst with low enantioselectivity demonstrated an interesting feature for complete conversion of racemic secondary alcohols through non-enantioselective oxidation.
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