Co-immobilized Phosphorylated Cofactors and Enzymes as Self-Sufficient Heterogeneous Biocatalysts for Chemical Processes

Abstract

Enzyme cofactors play a major role in biocatalysis, as many enzymes require them to catalyze highly valuable reactions in organic synthesis. However, the cofactor recycling is often a hurdle to implement enzymes at the industrial level. The fabrication of heterogeneous biocatalysts co-immobilizing phosphorylated cofactors (PLP, FAD⁺ , and NAD⁺ ) and enzymes onto the same solid material is reported to perform chemical reactions without exogeneous addition of cofactors in aqueous media. In these self-sufficient heterogeneous biocatalysts, the immobilized enzymes are catalytically active and the immobilized cofactors catalytically available and retained into the solid phase for several reaction cycles. Finally, we have applied a NAD⁺ -dependent heterogeneous biocatalyst to continuous flow asymmetric reduction of prochiral ketones, thus demonstrating the robustness of this approach for large scale biotransformations.

Keywords: biocatalysis; cofactor regeneration; heterogenous catalysis; porous materials; protein immobilization.