Research Article

Enantioselective Enzyme-Catalyzed Aziridination Enabled by Active-Site Evolution of a Cytochrome P450

Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering 210-41, California Institute of Technology, 1200 East California Boulevard, Pasadena, California 91125, United States
ACS Cent. Sci., 2015, 1 (2), pp 89–93
DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.5b00056
Publication Date (Web): April 22, 2015
Copyright © 2015 American Chemical Society
ACS AuthorChoice - This is an open access article published under an ACS AuthorChoice License, which permits copying and redistribution of the article or any adaptations for non-commercial purposes.

Synopsis

Engineered cytochrome P450 variants take on challenging non-natural reaction, aziridination of olefins, demonstrating the power of evolution to expand biocatalytic reaction space.

Abstract

Abstract Image

One of the greatest challenges in protein design is creating new enzymes, something evolution does all the time, starting from existing ones. Borrowing from nature’s evolutionary strategy, we have engineered a bacterial cytochrome P450 to catalyze highly enantioselective intermolecular aziridination, a synthetically useful reaction that has no natural biological counterpart. The new enzyme is fully genetically encoded, functions in vitro or in whole cells, and can be optimized rapidly to exhibit high enantioselectivity (up to 99% ee) and productivity (up to 1,000 catalytic turnovers) for intermolecular aziridination, demonstrated here with tosyl azide and substituted styrenes. This new aziridination activity highlights the remarkable ability of a natural enzyme to adapt and take on new functions. Once discovered in an evolvable enzyme, this non-natural activity was improved and its selectivity tuned through an evolutionary process of accumulating beneficial mutations.

Supporting Information


The following file is available free of charge on the ACS Publications website at DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.5b00056.

  • Figures S1–S19, Tables S1–S4, and experimental procedures (PDF)

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Article Views: 3,661 Times
Received 23 February 2015
Published online 22 April 2015
Published in print 27 May 2015
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