Rationally design and chemical modification: Getting a new and efficient biocatalyst for Henry reaction

A robust biocatalyst for green Henry reaction was achieved. Based on the fact that Henry reaction requires a base for proton transfer, we firstly proposed that the catalytic triad of lipase could play this role. The distance between the substrate and the catalytic center and the surrounding amino acid interaction network were used as the criterion. Benzaldehyde and nitromethane were used as the model reaction, RNL (Lipase from Rhizopus niveus) was considered to be the best Henry reaction catalyst via a molecular dynamics simulation. Then experiments demonstrated that RNL has a yield of 48 % using model substrate in water. Further, in order to increase product yield, the chemical modifier 1, 2-cyclohexanedione (CHD) was used to modify Arg on RNL. As a result, RNL (CHD) increased the activity of catalyzing Henry reaction and had a broad spectrum of substrates, the yield of the product was as high as 67-99 %.