Stereoselective Synthesis of Enantiopure Oxazolidinones via Biocatalytic Asymmetric Aminohydroxylation of Alkenes

Biocatalytic Thionation of Epoxides for Enantioselective Synthesis of Thiiranes

Expanding the enzymatic toolbox for the green synthesis of valuable molecules is still of high interest in synthetic chemistry and the pharmaceutical industry. Chiral thiiranes are valuable sulfur-containing heterocyclic compounds, but relevant methods for their enantioselective synthesis are limited. Herein, we report a biocatalytic thionation strategy for the enantioselective synthesis of thiiranes, which was developed based on the halohydrin dehalogenase (HHDH)-catalyzed enantioselective ring-opening reaction of epoxides with thiocyanate and a subsequent nonenzymatic rearrangement process. A novel HHDH was identified and engineered for enantioselective biocatalytic thionation of various aryl- and alkyl-substituted epoxides on a preparative scale, affording the corresponding thiiranes in up to 43 % isolated yield and 98 % ee. Large-scale synthesis and useful transformations of chiral thiiranes were also performed to demonstrate the utility and scalability of the biocatalytic thionation strategy.

Biocatalytic approach to chiral fluoroaromatic scaffolds

Ten different fluorinated aromatic epoxides have been tested as potential substrates for halohydrin dehalogenase (HHDH) HheC. The majority of investigated epoxides are useful building blocks in synthetic chemistry applications, with a number of them being polysubstituted. Moderate to high enantioselectivities (E_R = 15 → 200) were observed in azidolysis, allowing the synthesis of enantioenriched (R)-azido alcohols containing fluorine in the molecule. In the case where a reaction runs over 50% conversion, enantiopure (S)-epoxides are also available. While o-F-styrene oxide was easily converted into a product, a sterically challenging o-CF₃-derivative was not accepted by HheC. In silico probing of the binding site indicates that, in order to accommodate an o-CF₃-derivative in the HheC active site, it is necessary to eliminate steric hindrance. Hence, we extended our research by probing several available HheC variants containing relevant modifications in the active site. The active mutant P84V/F86P/T134A/N176A (named HheC-M4) was identified, showing not only high activity towards o-CF₃-styrene oxide, but also inverted enantioselectivity (E_S = 27). Since (S)-enantioselective HHDHs are rare and therefore valuable for their synthetic application, this enzyme was screened on the initial panel of substrates. The observed (S)-enantioselectivity (E_S = 1-111) is ascribed to the formation of the additional space by introduced mutations in HheC-M4, which is also confirmed by classical MD simulations. Successive molecular docking demonstrated that this newly formed tunnel located close to the protein surface is a critical feature of HheC-M4, representing a novel binding site.

Hot off the press

A personal selection of 32 recent papers is presented covering various aspects of current developments in bioorganic chemistry and novel natural products such as asporychalasin from Aspergillus oryzae.