An increasingly important consideration when planning the synthesis of biological active organic moleculesis the introduction of chirality. One method to achieve this is to use a chiral catalyst, such as an enzyme,which are highly enantiose/ective and specific, a feature that facilitates the preparation of target chiratpharmacologically active compounds. An additional property that makes these biocatalysts attractive to theorganic chemist, is that their properties, such as enantioselectivity, prochiral selectivity and specificity arecontrolled by organic solvents (when used as the reaction medium). Olso, enzymes are inexpensive, theycan be 'recycled' and are non toxic.Unfortunately there are some drawbacks that limit their applications and potential. The root of the problemis that the mechanism of enzymatic catalysis in non-aqueous media is still not well understood, andconsequently a trial and error approach is usually needed to find the best medium, enzymes and conditions.The goal of this study is to elucidate the mechanism by which organic solvents influence enzymaticstereoselectivity, activity and stability, and thereby enable the rational design of stereoselective systemsusing the physicochemical properties of the substrate and solvents, together with the enzyme structure. Wepropose to use a combination of experimental and theoretical methods (enzyme kinetics, sophisticatedmolecular-modeling and NMR methods) to understand the role of the medium in shaping a biocatalyststructure, activity and stereoselectivity.
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