Light-driven decarboxylative deuteration enabled by a divergently engineered photodecarboxylase
Jian Xu, Jiajie Fan, Yujiao Lou, Weihua Xu, Zhiguo Wang, Danyang Li, Haonan Zhou, Xianfu Lin, Qi Wu
Abstract
Abstract Despite the well-established chemical processes for C-D bond formation, the toolbox of enzymatic methodologies for deuterium incorporation has remained underdeveloped. Here we describe a photodecarboxylase from Chlorella variabilis NC64A ( Cv FAP)-catalyzed approach for the decarboxylative deuteration of various carboxylic acids by employing D 2 O as a cheap and readily available deuterium source. Divergent protein engineering of WT- Cv FAP is implemented using Focused Rational Iterative Site-specific Mutagenesis (FRISM) as a strategy for expanding the substrate scope. Using specific mutants, several series of substrates including different chain length acids, racemic substrates as well as bulky cyclic acids are successfully converted into the deuterated products (>40 examples). In many cases WT- Cv FAP fails completely. This approach also enables the enantiocomplementary kinetic resolution of racemic acids to afford chiral deuterated products, which can hardly be accomplished by existing methods. MD simulations explain the results of improved catalytic activity and stereoselectivity of WT Cv FAP and mutants.