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Rapid asymmetric reduction of ethyl 4-chloro-3-oxobutanoate using a thermostabilized mutant of ketoreductase ChKRED20

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Abstract

Ethyl (S)-4-chloro-3-hydroxybutanoate ((S)-CHBE) is an important chiral intermediate for the synthesis of “blockbuster” drug statins. The carbonyl reductase ChKRED20 from Chryseobacterium sp. CA49 was found to catalyze the bio-reductive production of (S)-CHBE with excellent stereoselectivity (>99.5 % ee). Perceiving a capacity for improvement, we sought to increase the thermostability of ChKRED20 to allow a higher reaction temperature. After one round of error-prone PCR (epPCR) library screening followed by the combination of beneficial mutations, a triple-mutant MC135 was successfully achieved with substantially enhanced thermostablity. The activity of MC135 at 50 °C was similar to the wild type. However, at its temperature optima of 65 °C, the mutant displayed 63 % increase of activity compared to the wild type and remained >95 % activity after being incubated for 15 days, while the wild type had a half-life of 11.9 min at 65 °C. At a substrate/catalyst ratio of 100 (w/w), the mutant catalyzed the complete conversion of 300 g/l substrate within 1 h to yield enantiopure (S)-CHBE with an isolated yield of 95 %, corresponding to a space-time yield of 1824 mM/h.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Professor Ganggang Wang and Mr. Yun Jin of the Chengdu Institute of Biology for the size-exclusion chromatography analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Environmental and Applied Microbiology, Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, 610041, China

    Feng-Jiao Zhao, Xiao-Qiong Pei, Zhi-Qiang Ren & Zhong-Liu Wu

  2. Environmental Microbiology Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Chengdu, 610041, China

    Feng-Jiao Zhao, Xiao-Qiong Pei, Zhi-Qiang Ren & Zhong-Liu Wu

  3. Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Feng-Jiao Zhao, Xiao-Qiong Pei & Zhi-Qiang Ren

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  1. Feng-Jiao Zhao
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  2. Xiao-Qiong Pei
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Correspondence to Zhong-Liu Wu.

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Funding

This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21372216 and 21572220), the Open Fund of Key Laboratory of Environmental and Applied Microbiology (KLCAS-2014-05 and KLCAS-2015-01), and the Key Research Program (KGZD-EW-606-14) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Zhao, FJ., Pei, XQ., Ren, ZQ. et al. Rapid asymmetric reduction of ethyl 4-chloro-3-oxobutanoate using a thermostabilized mutant of ketoreductase ChKRED20. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 100, 3567–3575 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-015-7200-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-015-7200-2

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