Stereoselectivity in the microbial reduction of (trifluoroacetyl)ferrocene and 2-fluoroacetophenones

Chemo- and Enantioselective Routes to Chiral Fluorinated Hydroxyketones Using Ketoreductases

“…Enzymes are an excellent choice as catalysts to mediate this chemoselective diketone reduction as the elaborate chiral environment should be able to differentiate between the ketones due to the steric and electronic differences of the carbonyls. However, prior to the results presented here, there are no examples in the literature of an enzymatic chemoselective reduction of methyl/trifluoromethyl diketones, although there are a number of examples of enzymes catalyzing the regio- and enantioselective reductions of substrates such as α-diketones − and β-diketones. − Additionally, these biocatalysts have been shown to have a broad substrate range including substituted acetophenones, − as well as 2,2,2-trifluoroacetophenone. − Finally, the catalysts that we screened are synthetically useful as they are commercially available as isolated enzymes and have been used to deliver multikilograms of optically pure chiral alcohol …”