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Chiral amines are valuable building blocks for the pharmaceutical industry. ω-TAms have emerged as an exciting option for their synthesis, offering a potential "green alternative" to overcome the drawbacks associated with conventional chemical methods. In this review, we explore the application of ω-TAms for pharmaceutical production. We discuss the diverse array of reactions available involving ω-TAms and process considerations of their use in both kinetic resolution and asymmetric synthesis. With the aid of specific drug intermediates and APIs, we chart the development of ω-TAms using protein engineering and their contribution to elegant one-pot cascades with other enzymes, including carbonyl reductases (CREDs), hydrolases and monoamine oxidases (MAOs), providing a comprehensive overview of their uses, beginning with initial applications through to the present day.

We illustrate that single-cell Raman microspectroscopy, coupled with deuterium isotope probing (Raman-DIP), provides a culture-independent and nondestructive approach to probe metabolic pathways of carbon substrates at the single-cell level. We found a distinguishable C-D vibration band at 2070-2300 cm in single-cell Raman spectra (SCRS) when Escherichia coli used deuterated glucose and Pseudomonas sp. used deuterated naphthalene as sole carbon sources. The intensity of the C-D band is proportional to the extent of deuteration in the carbon source, and as little as 5% deuteration can be distinguished by analysis of SCRS. It suggests that Raman-DIP could be used to semiquantitatively and sensitively indicate the metabolism of deuterated carbon source in microbes. A lower lipid conversion rate of deuterated naphthalene compared to that of deuterated glucose was observed, presumably owing to different anabolic pathways and membrane alteration. Apart from the C-D band shift from C-H, SCRS also reveal several isotopic shifts of the phenylalanine band, of which the positions correlate well with a computational model. A reduction in phenylalanine deuteration in Pseudomonas sp. compared to that in E. coli is due to the dilution effect of different pathways of phenylalanine biosynthesis in Pseudomonas sp. Collectively, we demonstrate that Raman-DIP can not only indicate metabolic activity using deuterated carbon sources but also reveal different metabolic pathways by analyzing SCRS. By harnessing such low-cost and versatile deuterated substrates, Raman-DIP has the potential to probe a wide range of metabolic pathways and functions at the single-cell level.

Lough Neagh is the largest and the most economically important lake in Ireland. It is also one of the most nutrient rich amongst the world’s major lakes. In this study, 16S rRNA analysis of total metagenomic DNA from the water column of Lough Neagh has revealed a high proportion of Cyanobacteria and low levels of Actinobacteria, Acidobacteria, Chloroflexi, and Firmicutes. The planktonic virome of Lough Neagh has been sequenced and 2,298,791 2×300 bp Illumina reads analysed. Comparison with previously characterised lakes demonstrates that the Lough Neagh viral community has the highest level of sequence diversity. Only about 15% of reads had homologs in the RefSeq database and tailed bacteriophages (Caudovirales) were identified as a major grouping. Within the Caudovirales, the Podoviridae and Siphoviridae were the two most dominant families (34.3% and 32.8% of the reads with sequence homology to the RefSeq database), while ssDNA bacteriophages constituted less than 1% of the virome. Putative cyanophages were found to be abundant. 66,450 viral contigs were assembled with the largest one being 58,805 bp; its existence, and that of another 34,467 bp contig, in the water column was confirmed. Analysis of the contigs confirmed the high abundance of cyanophages in the water column.

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