Catalytic Hydroxylation in Biphasic Systems using CYP102A1 Mutants

Cytochrome P450 monooxygenases are biocatalysts that hydroxylate or epoxidise a wide range of hydrophobic organic substrates. To date their technical application is limited to a small number of whole-cell biooxidations. The use of the isolated enzymes is believed to be impractical due to the low stability of this enzyme class, to the stochiometric need of the expensive cofactor NADPH, and due to the low solubility of most substrates in aqueous media. To overcome these problems we have investigated the application of a bacterial monooxygenase (mutants of CYP102A1) in a biphasic reaction system supported by cofactor recycling with NADP-dependent formate dehydrogenase from Pseudomonas sp 101. Using this experimental setup, cyclohexane, octane and myristic acid were hydroxylated. To reduce the process costs a novel NADH-dependent double mutant of CYP102A1 was designed. For recycling of NADH during myristic acid hydroxylation in a biphasic system NAD-dependent FDH was used. Stability of the monooxygenase under the reaction conditions is quite high as revealed by total turnover numbers of up to 12850 in NADPH-dependent cyclohexane hydroxylation and up to 30000 in NADH-dependent myristic acid oxidation.