Production of chiral C3- and C4-units by microbial enzymes

Enzyme (biocatalysis) reactions display far greater specificities, such as substrate specificity, stereospecificity, regiospecificity and so on, than more conventional forms of organic reactions. Using these specificities of the enzymes, many useful compounds have been enzymatically produced. Compounds possessing C3- and C4-units with additional functional groups are promising materials for the synthesis of various useful compounds. In particular, optically active C3- and C4-synthetic units are quite important intermediates for the preparation of pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals. Microbial transformation with enzymes showing stereo-specificities have been applied to the asymmetric synthesis of optically active substances. In this article the recent works on the practical production of chiral C3- and C4-synthetic units with microbial enzymes are described.