ethyl-4-chloro-3-hydroxybutanoate and ethyl-acetoacetate

The asymmetric bio-reduction of 4-chloro-acetoacetic-acid-ethyl-ester to the pharmaceutical building block (S)-4-chloro-3-hydroxybutanoate-ethyl-ester requires the utilization of an enantioselective robust biocatalyst. Some of the natural Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains, isolated from Mount Carmel National Park in Israel, were characterized as resistant to environmental stress. Nevertheless, these strains showed relatively low enantiomeric-excess (ee), while a laboratory strain, Y103, exhibited a selectivity of 98% ee. The enantioselective lab strain was crossed with the multi-stress resistant environmental isolate (93% ee) followed by backcross with Y103, to subsequently obtain a haploid offspring of backcross-1, exhibiting both high multi-stress resistance and high enantioselectivity (98% ee). Introducing osmotic (1 M NaCl), oxidative (0.6 mM H(2)O(2)) and thermal stress (44 degrees C) to growing cultures of the enantioselective parent, resulted in a decrease of 24-32% in specific activity, while the enantioselectivity of the stress-resistant parent decreased by 4-12% ee. Unlike its original parental strains, the new strain maintained constant specific activity and enantioselectivity when introduced to the various stress factors. This work shows that the classic introgression method, can serve as a viable approach for creating a robust enantioselective biocatalyst, designed for industrial production of chiral compounds.

Topics: Acetoacetates; Butyrates; Chlorides; Heat-Shock Response; Hydrogen Peroxide; Industrial Microbiology; Israel; Saccharomyces cerevisiae; Soil Microbiology

This study examined the characteristics and operational parameters of the asymmetric reduction of ethyl 4-chloro acetoacetate by bakers' yeast in order to produce S-4-chloro-3-hydroxybutyric acid ethyl ester. Eight operational variables were also optimized using the Taguchi method with consideration of the freshness of yeast cells as a noise factor. An L(18) orthogonal array was used to design the experiments. The reaction yield and the product's optical purity were considered as two product quality variables. A desirability function was applied to combine these two qualities as a single objective function. Additionally, the signal-to-noise (SN) ratio was used to estimate the variability in product quality. Optimization was undertaken not only to yield the best performance, but also to minimize the variation in quality. The confirmation experiments indicated that the reaction performance and the robustness of the product quality under the optimized conditions were higher than those obtained in other experiments in this study. Our results further demonstrate that the product's optical purity could be increased to >95% by adjusting the operational level of the main factors.

Topics: Acetoacetates; Algorithms; Bioreactors; Butyrates; Cells, Cultured; Combinatorial Chemistry Techniques; Culture Media; Drug Design; Enzyme Activation; Factor Analysis, Statistical; Oxidation-Reduction; Quality Control; Reproducibility of Results; Saccharomyces cerevisiae; Sensitivity and Specificity; Stereoisomerism; Substrate Specificity