Osami Shoji

Playing tricks on enzymes: Direct hydroxylation of benzene to phenol was catalyzed by wild-type P450BM3 in the presence of perfluorinated carboxylic acids as decoy molecules. The catalytic turnover rate reached 120 min−1 per P450. The selectivity towards phenol production was very high and no overoxidation products were detected. Phenol is a key intermediate in industry for the synthesis of drugs, dyes, and functional polymers. Because phenol is currently produced by the cumene process,1 which i

Trick or treat: Cytochrome P450BSβ was transformed into a monooxygenase suitable for practical use by employing a simple substrate trick. The substrate specificity of P450BSβ was altered drastically by a decoy molecule, while its intrinsic advantage, the use of hydrogen peroxide, was retained. The catalytic activities and the enantioselectivity of the H2O2–P450BSβ system are highly dependent on the structure of the decoy molecule. Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW u

Ferrocene-bridged trisporphyrin (2) was synthesized by two-steps condensation of corresponding aldehydes and dipyrromethanes, and its self-assembling behavior based on the complementary coordination motif of imidazolylporphyrinatozinc(II) was investigated in conjunction with hinge-like flexibility given by freely rotating cyclopentadienyl rings of ferrocene connector. Ferrocene-bridged trisporphyrin (2) spontaneously and exclusively generated the dimeric ring (7) upon simple zinc(II) insertion,

Coordination-assembled porphyrin macrocycles reinforced with covalent bondings were deposited on a metal surface by a pulse injection method, and their scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) images were recorded under ultrahigh vacuum conditions at liquid nitrogen temperature. The decamer ring consisting of 30 porphyrins gave clear circular STM images with hollow structure, whereas that without covalent linking did not give clear circular images, showing that covalent linking of the coordination pa

The selective hydroxylation of benzene to phenol, without the formation of side products resulting from overoxidation, is catalyzed by cytochrome P450BM3 with the assistance of amino acid derivatives as decoy molecules. The catalytic turnover rate and the total turnover number reached 259 min^-1 P450BM3^-1 and 40 200 P450BM3^-1 when N-heptyl-l-proline modified with l-phenylalanine (C7-l-Pro-l-Phe) was used as the decoy molecule. This work shows that amino acid deriv

H₂O₂-dependent cytochrome P450s that can catalyze monooxygenation of nonnative substrates were constructed by one-point mutagenesis.

An Escherichia coli whole-cell biocatalyst for the direct hydroxylation of benzene to phenol has been developed. By adding amino acid derivatives as decoy molecules to the culture medium, wild-type cytochrome P450BM3 (P450BM3) expressed in E.coli can be activated and non-native substrates hydroxylated, without supplementing with NADPH. The yield of phenol reached 59 % when N-heptyl-l-prolyl-l-phenylalanine (C7-Pro-Phe) was employed as the decoy molecule. It was shown that decoy molecules, especi

Bacterial cytochrome P450s (P450s) are at the focus of attention as potential biocatalysts for applications in green synthetic chemistry, as they possess high activity for the hydroxylation of inert substrate C-H bonds. The high activity of bacterial P450s, such as P450BM3, is chiefly due to their high substrate specificity, and consequently, the catalytic activity of P450BM3 toward non-native substrates is very low, limiting the utility of bacterial P450s as biocatalysts. To enable oxidation of

The heme acquisition system A protein secreted by Pseudomonas aeruginosa (HasA(p)) can capture several synthetic metal complexes other than heme. The crystal structures of HasA(p) harboring synthetic metal complexes revealed only small perturbation of the overall HasA(p) structure. An inhibitory effect upon heme acquisition by HasA(p) bearing synthetic metal complexes was examined by monitoring the growth of Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1. HasA(p) bound to iron-phthalocyanine inhibits heme acquisit

The benzylic hydroxylation of non-native substrates was catalysed by cytochrome P450BM3, wherein “decoy molecules” controlled the stereoselectivity of the reactions.

Highly effective dipeptidic decoy molecules, which stimulate the direct hydroxylation of benzene by wild-type cytochrome P450BM3, were successfully developed through a rationally designed screening method. Extensive synthesis and step-wise screening of over 600 dipeptide derivatives were performed for the efficient evolution of decoy molecules. In the presence of N-(3-cyclopentyl)propanoyl-l-pipecolyl-l-phenylalanine (3CPPA-Pip-Phe), one of the most effective decoy molecules discovered herein, t