Regioselective transformations are highly desirable in organic synthesis, since they allow for the differentiation between two or more (chemically identical) reactive centers, [1] which is otherwise only possible by employing sophisticated and laborious protection strategies. [2] However, protectinggroup-free strategies are superior and have received outstanding merits for their successes. [3,4] Although the regioselective amination of, for example, alkanes, [5] allylic systems, [6] or indoles, [7] has been recently described, the regioselective asymmetric bioamination of diketones has not yet been reported, to the best of our knowledge. For example, diketones, such as 1,5-diketo compounds, may serve as possible precursors for a chiral piperidine scaffold. [8] Consequently, we chose 2,6-diketones 1 as model substrates to investigate the possible asymmetric regioselective amination employing w-transaminases (w-TAs; Scheme 1). [9,10] Various (S)-and (R)-stereoselective w-transaminases were tested initially for the transformation of diketone 1 a at a substrate concentration of 50 mm (Table 1). Five w-TAs (Chromobacterium violaceum, [10i, 11] Bacillus megaterium, [10i, 12] (R)-Arthrobacter, [10b] Aspergillus terreus, and Hyphomonas neptunium [10b,h] ) out of six showed perfect regioselectivity for the differentiation between the two keto groups. Hence, the amination occurred exclusively at the sterically less demanding w-1 ketone moiety, leading to the amino ketone 2 a, while the w-3 position remained untouched. The intermediate amino ketone 2 a spontaneously cyclized, finally giving D1piperideine 4 a. Only the w-TA from Vibrio fluvialis [9h, 13] (entry 3) showed diminished regioselectivity, since regioisomer 5 a was formed in minor quantities (5-7 %) along with regioisomer 4 a at high conversion. Notably, the corresponding diamine was never detected in any experiment.Using alanine as amine donor led to the formation of pyruvate as a by-product, which was removed/recycled to alanine through the use of an alanine dehydrogenase (AlaDH) system. In all cases, perfect conversions were achieved for this system. When removing pyruvate by reduction to lactate through the use of a lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) system, the conversions varied from 56-98 %. The Scheme 1. Regioselective amination of various 1,5-diketones. Table 1: Asymmetric reductive amination of diketone 1 a. [a] AlaDH system LDH system Entry w-TA conv [%] 4 a [%] ee 4 a [%] 5 a [%] conv [%] 4 a [%] ee 4 a [%] 5 a [%] 1 C. violaceum > 99 > 99 > 99 (S) < 0.1 93 93 > 99 (S) < 0.1 2 B. megaterium > 99 83 [b] > 99 (S) < 0.1 98 98 > 99 (S) < 0.1 3 V. fluvialis > 99 93 > 99 (S) 7 98 92 > 99 (S) 6 4 (R)-Arthrobacter > 99 87 [b] > 99 (R) < 0.1 63 63 > 99 (R) < 0.1 5 A. terreus > 99 > 99 > 99 (R) < 0.1 56 56 > 99 (R) < 0.1 6 H. neptunium > 99 89 [b] > 99 (R) < 0.1 78 78 > 99 (R) < 0.1 [a] Conversions/compositions and ee values were determined by GC-FID analysis. Reaction conditions: diketone 1 a (50 mm), lyophilized E. coli cells containing the overexpressed w-T...