Enantioselective α-hydroxylation of 2-arylacetic acid derivatives and buspirone catalyzed by engineered cytochrome P450 BM-3

Article abstract of DOI:10.1021/ja061261x

Here we report that an engineered microbial cytochrome P450 BM-3 (CYP102A subfamily) efficiently catalyzes the α-hydroxylation of phenylacetic acid esters. This P450 BM-3 variant also produces the authentic human metabolite of buspirone, R-6-hydroxybuspir

Full text of DOI:10.1021/ja061261x

Published on Web 04/13/2006
Enantioselective r-Hydroxylation of 2-Arylacetic Acid Derivatives and
Buspirone Catalyzed by Engineered Cytochrome P450 BM-3
Marco Landwehr,† Lisa Hochrein,† Christopher R. Otey,† Alex Kasrayan,‡ Jan-E. Ba¨ckvall,‡ and
Frances H. Arnold*,†
DiVision of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering 210-41, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California
91125-4100, U.S.A., and Department of Organic Chemistry, Arrhenius Laboratory, Stockholm UniVersity, SE-106
91 Stockholm, Sweden.
Received February 22, 2006; E-mail: frances@cheme.caltech.edu
Table 1. Chiral Product Analysis of P450
Monooxygenase-Catalyzed Hydroxylation of the Indicated
Phenylacetic Acid Esters
Biocatalytic processes are becoming increasingly important in
organic synthesis1 due to their unique selectivity advantages over
conventional methods.2,3 Common biocatalytic transformations
include enantioselective transesterification,4 reduction of ketones,2
Baeyer-Villiger oxidation,5 and epoxide opening.6 Recently, bio-
catalytic hydroxylations have attracted considerable interest.7,8 Here,
we report a variant of cytochrome P450 BM-3 (BM-3; isolated from
Bacillus megaterium) capable of efficient and highly enantioselec-
tive hydroxylation at the alpha position of certain carboxylic and
peptide groups.
BM-3 is a well-studied, NADPH-dependent monooxygenase that
hydroxylates long-chain fatty acids at the ω-1, ω-2, and ω-3
positions at high rates.9 BM-3 has provided an evolvable protein
framework for obtaining modified or new activities. Rational design
and directed evolution approaches have created BM-3 variants with
activity on medium-chain fatty acids,10 high selectivity for 2-hy-
droxylation of n-alkanes such as hexane,11 activity on aromatic
compounds,12 and the ability to oxidize ethane to ethanol.13 BM-3
variants were also recently shown to yield human drug metabo-
lites.14
enzyme
substrate
TTN
% selectivitya
% ee (S)
BM-3
1a (Me)
1b (Et)
1c (Pr)
1d (Bu)
1a (Me)
1b (Et)
1c (Pr)
1d (Bu)
1a (Me)
1b (Et)
1c (Pr)
1d (Bu)
1a (Me)
1b (Et)
1c (Pr)
1d (Bu)
105
92
63
20
25
234
623
396
102
63
77
86
27
115
1640
660
44
29
17
6
90
70
82
71
43
74
85
75
77
52
85
95
39
56
93
89
BM-3-F87A
9-10A
25
86
99
88
57
63
41
25
12
75
88
76
9-10A-F87A
a Regioselectivity for mandelic acid esters, side products due to hy-
droxylation or hydrolysis of ester chain.
2-Aryl-2-hydroxyacetic acid derivatives are pharmaceutical
building blocks for semisynthetic penicillins, cephalosporin, and
antiobesity agents.15 Mandelic acid derivatives have been found to
act as thrombin inhibitors and anticoagulants.16 Due to the high
level of interest in these compounds, a number of methods have
been developed for their synthesis in the enantiomerically pure
form.17 These methods often use racemic substrates or intermediates
for resolution or selective hydrolysis rather than direct enantiose-
lective hydroxylation at the targeted position. No cytochrome P450
that accepts 2-arylacetic acids as substrates is reported in the
literature. R-Hydroxylation of carboxylic acids has only been
reported for P450 BSâ and SPR, both of which are active only on
long-chain fatty acids (e.g., myristic acid) and only as peroxyge-
nases.18 We were therefore interested in whether BM-3 variants
could hydroxylate small aromatic carboxylic acids.
Observations in our laboratory suggested that small, charged
molecules such as carboxylic acids are unlikely to be accepted by
the hydrophobic active site of BM-3. Recent studies have shown
that protecting groups can strongly influence P450 activity.8,19
Therefore, using different-sized ester groups to mask the acid, we
investigated whether the chain length of the substrate influences
binding and specificity of hydroxylation.
number (TTN; mol product/mol catalyst) for BM-3 likely reflects
an active site evolved for the alkyl tails of fatty acids, which leads
to increased uncoupling (consuming NADPH cofactor without
oxidizing the substrate) for nonnatural substrates.
It is known that mutations at F87 can increase BM-3 activity
toward small aromatic compounds.20 We found that the F87A
mutation increased the TTN nearly 10-fold and increased regiose-
lectivity for the R-hydroxylated product to as high as 99% on the
propyl ester. The ee for this reaction depends on the size of the
ester group and varies from 43 to 85% ee, with the highest value
for the propyl ester. We also tested variants of BM-3 that were
evolved previously for high activity on medium-chain alkanes,
9-10A and 1-12G (differing by 14 and 16 mutations, respectively,
from the wild-type sequence),11 to see if they exhibit higher TTN
on substrates 1a-d. Bioconversions with 1-12G showed 5-20-
fold less conversion and very low regioselectivity for the desired
products in comparison to BM-3-F87A and was therefore excluded
from further investigations (data not shown). Variant 9-10A, on
the other hand, showed increased TTN on the propyl and butyl
esters. We then constructed 9-10A with the F87A mutation and
found that this 9-10A-F87A variant has the highest TTN (up to
1640) and gives propyl mandelate in 93% ee. Each 9-10A-F87A
BM-3 shows low activity with moderate enantioselectivity on
2-phenylacetic acid esters (Table 1). For example, the methyl and
propyl esters of (S)-mandelic acid were obtained in 90 and 82%
enantiomeric excess (ee), respectively. The low total turnover
† California Institute of Technology.
‡ Stockholm University.
9
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J. AM. CHEM. SOC. 2006, 128, 6058-6059
10.1021/ja061261x CCC: $33.50 © 2006 American Chemical Society

C O M M U N I C A T I O N S
Table 2. Chiral Product Analysis of P450
Monooxygenase-Catalyzed Hydroxylation of Chlorinated
Phenylacetic Acid Esters
Foundation for Strategic Research (A.K. and J.E.B.) is gratefully
acknowledged. Special thanks to N. Dalleska and M. Chen for
assistance with the GC, P. Meinhold for cloning the 9-10A-F87A
variant, and R. Patel, S. Kiang, and J. Depue (Bristol-Myers Squibb)
for assistance with the buspirone analytics.
enzyme
substrate
TTN
% selectivitya
% ee
9-10A-F87A
3b (Et)
3c (Pr)
3d (Bu)
180
940
700
70
90
89
57
89
94
Supporting Information Available: Full experimental details
(PDF), and full author list for ref 17d. This material is available free
of charge via the Internet at http://pubs.acs.org.
a Regioselectivity for mandelic acid ester derivatives.
enzyme catalyzes the hydroxylation of 254 ( 29 molecules per
minute with 25% coupling to cofactor consumption.
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Acknowledgment. Financial support from the National Science
Foundation (BES9981770), NIH Grant R01 GM068664-01, NSF
Graduate Research Fellowship program (L.H.), and the Swedish
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