D-and L-Allothreonine [D-and L-aThr; (2R,3R)-and (2S,3S)-2-amino-3-hydroxybutanoic acid] are useful as chiral reagents in asymmetric syntheses.1) However, D-and L-aThr, non-proteinogenic a-amino acids, are difficult to produce commercially in large quantities. Therefore, synthetic DLaThr 2-4) has been subjected to optical resolution by separating the diastereoisomeric salts of DL-aThr derivatives to obtain the enantiomers. 5,6) In our previous paper, 7) DL-aThr was found to exist as a conglomerate and to be optically resolved by preferential crystallization and replacing crystallization of DL-aThr. The optical resolution by replacing crystallization is a procedure for obtaining an enantiomer from a conglomerate, and is achieved by allowing an optically active co-solute to coexist in a racemic supersaturated solution.8) DL-aThr was optically resolved using 4-hydroxy-L-proline (L-Hyp) as the optically active cosolute, and D-aThr was allowed to preferentially crystallize from a supersaturated solution of DL-aThr.7) Although L-aThr will be preferentially crystallized from the racemic solution in the presence of D-Hyp, L-Hyp is expensive and D-Hyp is not commercially available. Therefore, we selected D-and L-Ala, which are commercially available and are the most inexpensive optically active a-amino acids, as the optically active cosolutes in optical resolution by replacing crystallization of DL-aThr (Chart 1).Optical resolution by replacing crystallization is based on different interactions between enantiomers and the optically active co-solute. Therefore, the solubilities (mole fractions) of D-, L-, and DL-aThr were first measured in the presence of L-Ala (16.0 mmol) in 100 cm 3 of water at 10°C; these values are summarized in Table 1