Enzyme-catalyzed kinetic resolutions of secondary alcohols are a standard procedure today and several lipases and esterases have been described to show high activity and enantioselectivity. In contrast, tertiary alcohols and their esters are accepted only by a few biocatalysts. Only lipases and esterases with a conserved GGG(A)X-motif are active, but show low activity combined with low enantios...

Temperature programmed desorption methods have been used to probe the enantioselectivity of achiral Cu(100), Cu(110), and Cu(111) single crystal surfaces modified by chiral organic molecules including amino acids, alcohols, alkoxides, and amino-alcohols. The following combinations of chiral probes and chiral modifiers on Cu surfaces were included in this study: propylene oxide (PO) on L-alanine...

The invariance principle of enzyme enantioselectivity must be absolute because it is absolutely essential to the homochiral biological world. Most enzymes are strictly enantioselective, and tryptophanase is one of the enzymes with extreme absolute enantioselectivity for L-tryptophan. Contrary to conventional knowledge about the principle, tryptophanase becomes flexible to catalyze D-tryptophan ...

A reagent-controlled enantioselectivity switch was uncovered in the asymmetric α-fluorination of β-ketocarbonyls by a chiral primary amine catalyst. By a simple swap of fluorination reagents, both enantiomers of the quaternary fluorination adducts could be obtained with good yields and high enantioselectivity. Mechanistic studies disclosed dual H-bonding and electrostatic stereocontrolling mode...

A triple mutant of P450pyr monooxygenase (P450pyrTM) catalysed the epoxidation of several para-substituted styrenes as the first enzyme showing high (R)-enantioselectivity and high conversion, demonstrated a broad substrate range, and showed high enantioselectivity for the epoxidation of an unconjugated 1,1-disubstituted alkene, 2-methyl-3-phenyl-1-propene, and a cyclic alkene, N-phenoxycarbony...

Helical peptides built principally from the achiral quaternary amino acid Aib but with an induced preferred screw-sense exhibit enantioselectivity in their chain-extension reactions when presented with a racemic tertiary amino acid. This is the first demonstration that secondary structure alone, in the absence of local chiral residues, can direct the enantioselectivity of peptide coupling.

A magnetically recoverable chiral rhodium catalyst exhibited excellent catalytic activity and enantioselectivity in asymmetric transfer hydrogenation of aromatic ketones in aqueous medium, which could be recovered easily via a small magnet and used repetitively ten times without obviously affecting its enantioselectivity.

A reagent-controlled enantioselectivity switch was uncovered in the asymmetric a-fluorination of bketocarbonyls by a chiral primary amine catalyst. By a simple swap of fluorination reagents, both enantiomers of the quaternary fluorination adducts could be obtained with good yields and high enantioselectivity. Mechanistic studies disclosed dual H-bonding and electrostatic stereocontrolling modes...

Improving the existing knowledge on the enantioselectivity of processes affecting chiral pesticide enantiomers in the environment is necessary to maximize the efficacy and minimize the environmental impact caused by the use of pesticides with chiral properties. In this work, the enantioselectivity of the sorption, degradation, and leaching processes of the chiral fungicide metalaxyl in three sl...

Twelve P-chiral phosphine oxides were screened for their ability to act as a chiral Lewis base catalyst for the asymmetric hydrosilylation of ketimines, providing chiral amines in good conversion and yield, but relatively poor enantioselectivity (ee <30%). Mechanistic studies paralleling work on chiral sulfinamides have shown a non-linear relationship of catalyst enantioselectivity and the chir...