Biocatalytic ketone reduction - a study on screening and effect of culture conditions on the reduction of selected ketones

Microbial conversions are gaining importance in the synthesis of important drug metabolites and their intermediates as they are good alternative to chemical synthesis since they are enantio-selective and regio-selective and even can be carried out at ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure. Till date, biocatalytic reduction of acetophenone and its derivatives has been widely reported. In the present study, we have made an attempt to carry out the microbial bioreduction of o-hydroxyacetophenone by screening some of the selected microorganisms which were obtained from culture collection centre as well as those which are isolated in our Microbiology lab. The selected microorganisms include Aspergillus ochraceous, Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus tubingenesis, Aspergillus niger, Rhizopus stolanifer MTCC 162, Rhizopus stolanifer MTCC 2591 and Baker’s yeast.Among the seven microorganisms screened for the bioreduction of o-hydroxyacetophenone, Baker’s yeast and Aspergillus tubingenesis showed significant bioconversion where as Aspergillus ochraceous exhibited the least bioconversion.In our earlier study it was found that Aspergillus flavus has the required bioreductase enzyme, which showed the maximum conversion of p-chloroacetophenone to p-chlorophenylethanol. Hence optimization of culture conditions to get maximum enzyme expression and hence maximum conversion was thought off. The parameters considered for the study include effect of various Carbon sources, Nitrogen source, Metal ions, incubation Temperature and media pH on enzyme expression. The optimized culture a condition at which maximum bioconversion was achieved was maltose among various carbon sources. Tryptone was found to have maximum effect among the nitrogen sources. Media pH 7.6 and incubation temperature of 35 °C was found to be favourable for maximum enzyme activity. Among various divalent metal salts, addition of magnesium sulphate to the media significantly increased the enzyme activity.