Catalysts for Fine Chemical Synthesis

Abstract

The science of biotransformations has been investigated since the days of Pasteur [1] . However, progress in the use of enzymes and whole cells in synthetic organic chemistry was relatively slow until the 1950s, when the use of microorganisms to modify the steroid nucleus was studied in industry and academic laboratories [2] . Thus conversions such as the transformation of 17a-acetoxy-11deoxycortisol into cortisol (hydrocortisone) (1), using the microorganismCurvularia lunata to introduce the 11b-hydroxy group directly, helped to revive interest in the application of biological catalysis to problems in synthetic organic chemistry. The momentum was continued by Charles Sih, J. Bryan Jones, George Whitesides and others, until, by the mid-1980s, biocatalysis