Novel Eco-Friendly Approaches for the Reduction of Selected Carbonyl Compounds.

This paper reports reduction of (-)-verbenone, 1,3-indanedione, 3-indolyl methyl ketone and 2- furyl methyl ketoneinvolving two green and environment friendly methods viz. biotransformation using Baker’s yeast as microbial catalyst in free as well as immobilized form and electrochemical method. Microbial transformation was carried out in water – isopropanol mixture (4:1) for selected substrates. The electrochemical reduction of these substrates was also carried out at constant current by using Stainless Steel Electrode (SS- 316). The reduction products were isolated and purified by chromatographic techniques and characterized on the basisof spectral analysis.