Engineering Enzyme Substrate Scope Complementarity for Promiscuous Cascade Synthesis of 1,2-Amino Alcohols.

Biocatalytic cascades are uniquely powerful for the efficient, asymmetric synthesis of bioactive compounds. However, high substrate specificity can hinder the scope of biocatalytic cascades because the constituent enzymes may have non-complementary activity. In this study, we implemented a substrate multiplexed screening (SUMS) based directed evolution approach to improve the substrate scope overlap between a transaldolase (ObiH) and a decarboxylase for the production of chiral 1,2-amino alcohols. To generate a promiscuous cascade, we engineered a tryptophan decarboxylase to act efficiently on ß-OH amino acids while avoiding activity on l-threonine, which is needed for ObiH activity. We leveraged this exquisite selectivity with matched substrate scope to produce a variety of enantiopure 1,2-amino alcohols in a one-pot cascade from aldehydes or styrene oxides. This demonstration shows how SUMS can be used to guide the development of promiscuous, C-C bond forming cascades.

Occupational modulation in the (3+1)-dimensional incommensurate structure of (2S,3S)-2-amino-3-hydroxy-3-methyl-4-phenoxybutanoic acid dihydrate.

The incommensurately modulated structure of (2S,3S)-2-amino-3-hydroxy-3-methyl-4-phenoxybutanoic acid dihydrate (C11H15NO4·2H2O or I·2H2O) is described in the (3+1)-dimensional superspace group P212121(0ß0)000 (ß = 0.357). The loss of the three-dimensional periodicity is ascribed to the occupational modulation of one positionally disordered solvent water molecule, where the two positions are related by a small translation [ca 0.666 (9) Å] and ∼168 (5)° rotation about one of its O-H bonds, with an average 0.624 (3):0.376 (3) occupancy ratio. The occupational modulation of this molecule arises due to the competition between the different hydrogen-bonding motifs associated with each position. The structure can be very well refined in the average approximation (all satellite reflections disregarded) in the space group P212121, with the water molecule refined as disordered over two positions in a 0.625 (16):0.375 (16) ratio. The refinement in the commensurate threefold supercell approximation in the space group P1121 is also of high quality, with the six corresponding water molecules exhibiting three different occupancy ratios averaging 0.635:0.365.