Nitriles, which are mostly needed and produced by the chemical industry, play a major role in various industry segments, ranging from high-volume, low-price sectors, such as polymers, to low-volume, high-price sectors, such as chiral pharma drugs. A common industrial technology for nitrile production is ammoxidation as a gas-phase reaction at high temperature. Further popular approaches are substitution or addition reactions with hydrogen cyanide or derivatives thereof. A major drawback, however, is the very high toxicity of cyanide. Recently, as a synthetic alternative, a novel enzymatic approach towards nitriles has been developed with aldoxime dehydratases, which are capable of converting an aldoxime in one step through dehydration into nitriles. Because the aldoxime substrates are easily accessible, this route is of high interest for synthetic purposes. However, whenever a novel method is developed for organic synthesis, it raises the question of substrate scope as one of the key criteria for application as a "synthetic platform technology". Thus, the scope of this review is to give an overview of the current state of the substrate scope of this enzymatic method for synthesizing nitriles with aldoxime dehydratases. As a recently emerging enzyme class, a range of substrates has already been studied so far, comprising nonchiral and chiral aldoximes. This enzyme class of aldoxime dehydratases shows a broad substrate tolerance and accepts aliphatic and aromatic aldoximes, as well as arylaliphatic aldoximes. Furthermore, aldoximes with a stereogenic center are also recognized and high enantioselectivities are found for 2-arylpropylaldoximes, in particular. It is further noteworthy that the enantiopreference depends on the E and Z isomers. Thus, opposite enantiomers are accessible from the same racemic aldehyde and the same enzyme.
Keywords: aldoxime dehydratases; biocatalysis; enzyme catalysis; nitriles; stereochemistry.
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