Simultaneous biocatalyst production and baeyer-villiger oxidation for bioonversion of cyclohexanone by recombinant Escherichia coli expressing cyclohexanone monooxygenase

Cyclohexanone monooxygenase (CHMO) catalyzing Baeyer-Villiger oxidation converts cyclic ketones into optically pure lactones, which have been used as building blocks in organic synthesis. A recombinant Escherichia coli BL21(DE3)/pMM4 expressing CHMO originated from Acinetobacter sp. NCIB 9871 was used to produce ε-caprolactone through a simultaneous biocatalyst production and Baeyer-Villiger oxidation (SPO) process. Afed-batch process was designed to obtain high cell density for improvin production of ε-caprolactone. The fed-batch SPO process have the best results, 10.2 g/L of ε-caprolactone and 0.34 g/(L·h) of productivity, corresponding to a 10.5- and 3.4-fold enhancement compared with those of the batch SPO, respectively.