Chiral separation of d/l-arginine with whole cells through an engineered FhuA nanochannel

Chem Commun (Camb). 2019 May 7;55(38):5431-5434. doi: 10.1039/c9cc00154a.

Abstract

Downstream processing to obtain enantiopure compounds from a racemic mixture relies mainly on crystallization. Natural transporters can specifically translocate enantiomers through membranes. Here a β-barrel transmembrane protein FhuA is re-engineered into a chiral channel protein (FhuAF4) to resolve racemic mixtures of d-/l-arginine. The engineered FhuAF4 variant exhibits an enantioselectivity (E-value) of 1.92 and an enantiomeric excess percentage (ee%) of 23.91 at 52.39% conversion. OmniChange mutant libraries at the computationally identified "filter-regions" likely help to identify FhuA variants for enantiomeric separation of other compounds.

MeSH terms

  • Arginine / chemistry*
  • Arginine / isolation & purification*
  • Bacterial Outer Membrane Proteins / chemistry*
  • Escherichia coli Proteins / chemistry*
  • Nanostructures*
  • Protein Engineering*
  • Stereoisomerism

Substances

  • Bacterial Outer Membrane Proteins
  • Escherichia coli Proteins
  • FhuA protein, E coli
  • Arginine