Interfacing Microbial Styrene Production with a Biocompatible Cyclopropanation Reaction |
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| Authors: | Dr Stephen Wallace Prof Emily P Balskus |
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| Affiliation: | Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (USA) http://scholar.harvard.edu/balskus |
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| Abstract: | The introduction of new reactivity into living organisms is a major challenge in synthetic biology. Despite an increasing interest in both the development of small‐molecule catalysts that are compatible with aqueous media and the engineering of enzymes to perform new chemistry in vitro, the integration of non‐native reactivity into metabolic pathways for small‐molecule production has been underexplored. Herein we report a biocompatible iron(III) phthalocyanine catalyst capable of efficient olefin cyclopropanation in the presence of a living microorganism. By interfacing this catalyst with E. coli engineered to produce styrene, we synthesized non‐natural phenyl cyclopropanes directly from D ‐glucose in single‐vessel fermentations. This process is the first example of the combination of nonbiological carbene‐transfer reactivity with cellular metabolism for small‐molecule production. |
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| Keywords: | iron metabolism phthalocyanine synthetic biology synthetic methods |
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