Promotion Effect of Resin Adsorption on the Asymmetric Reduction of Acetophenone Catalyzed by Barker's Yeast

摘要

Optically active aryl alcohols are one kind of the most important chiral building blocks for many single enantiomer pharmaceuticals. Asymmetric reduction of corresponding prochiral ketone to chiral alcohol by active yeast cells is one of the most promising routes. But the space-time productivity was very low due to the toxicity of the substrate and product to the cell, which prohibited the reaction proceeding at high substrate concentration. To increase the initial substrate concentration by introducing macropore adsorbing resin to avoid the toxicity of substrate and product to the cells was studied, when asymmetric reduction of acetophenone (ACP) to chiral α-phenylethyl alcohol (PEA) by Saccharomyces cerevisiae was chosen as the model reaction. The experiments showed the substrate and product had obvious toxicity to yeast cell. The experiments also indicated that this reaction could be remarkably improved with introducing the appropriate kind of resin. The initial ACP concentration could be increased from 35mmol·L<'-1> to 72.2mmol·L<'-1> when the appropriate amount of resin was used.