No abstract

Enzymatic dioxygenation of benzyl azide by toluene dioxygenase (TDO) produces significant amounts of the cis-cyclohexadienediol derived from benzonitrile, along with the expected azido diols. We demonstrate that TDO catalyses the oxidation of benzyl azide to benzonitrile, which is further dioxygenated to produce the observed cis-diol. A proposed mechanism for this transformation involves initial benzylic monooxygenation followed by a nitrene-mediated rearrangement to form an oxime, which is further dehydrated to afford the nitrile. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of enzymatic oxidation of an alkyl azide to a nitrile. In addition, the described oxime-dehydration activity has not been reported for Rieske dioxygenases.

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Enzymatic dioxygenation of benzyl azide by toluene dioxygenase produces the expected enantiopure cis-cyclohexadienediol along with an exocyclic diene formed by a spontaneous sequence of two [3,3] sigmatropic shifts. This novel dienediol presents high synthetic potential for natural product synthesis. The sigmatropic rearrangements can be reversed by protection of the diol moiety. An optimized production protocol for either of these valuable diols is presented.

Toluene Dioxygenase (TDO) enzymatic complex has been widely used as a biocatalyst for the regio-and enantioselective preparation of ciscyclohexadienediols, which are very important starting materials for organic synthesis. However, the lack of regio-and stereodiversity of the dioxygenation process by TDO and related dioxygenases constitutes a clear drawback when planning the use of these diols in synthetic schemes. In this work, we developed three TDO mutants in residues phenylalanine 366, threonine 365 and isoleucine 324, with the aim to alter the chemo-, regio-and stereoselectivity of the biotransformation of arenes. While no changes in the regioselectivity of the process were observed, dramatic variations in the chemo-and enantioselectivity were found for mutants I324F, T365N and F366 V in a substratedependent manner.