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Double substituted variant of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens esterase with enhanced enantioselectivity and high activity towards 1-(3′,4′-methylenedioxyphenyl)ethyl acetate

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Abstract

Bacillus amyloliquefaciens esterase (BAE) was applied to produce (R)-1-(3′,4′-methylenedioxyphenyl)ethanol, a chiral drug intermediate. In this study, we improved the enantioselectivity of BAE by protein engineering instead of process engineering as used in our previous work. Saturation mutagenesis was carried out on eight positions of BAE based on structure modeling and substrate docking. A double substituted variant V10 (K358D/A396C) showed an excellent enantioselectivity without decreasing the activity. The functions of these two mutations (K358D and A396C) were investigated, revealing a synergic effect on the BAE enantioselectivity. Using the variant V10, enantiopure (R)-1-(3′,4′-methylenedioxyphenyl)ethanol could be readily prepared in >97 % ee, affording a high space-time yield (123 g L−1 day−1) and a high ratio of substrate/catalyst (40 g g−1) in 1-L reaction.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 31200050 & 21276082), Ministry of Science and Technology, People’s Republic of China (Nos. 2011AA02A210 & 2011CB710800), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Ministry of Education, People’s Republic China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai, 200237, China

    Jia-Yan Liu, Yun-Peng Bai & Jian-He Xu

  2. Shanghai Key Laboratory of New Drug Design, School of Pharmacy, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai, 200237, China

    Han-Ping Bian & Yun Tang

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  1. Jia-Yan Liu
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  2. Han-Ping Bian
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  3. Yun Tang
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  4. Yun-Peng Bai
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  5. Jian-He Xu
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Correspondence to Jian-He Xu.

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Liu, JY., Bian, HP., Tang, Y. et al. Double substituted variant of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens esterase with enhanced enantioselectivity and high activity towards 1-(3′,4′-methylenedioxyphenyl)ethyl acetate. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 99, 1701–1708 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-014-5992-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-014-5992-0

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