This section presents the abstract of scientific papers selected from the latest published on Pubmed.

The selection has been made using the K-words “fine chemicals” and “intermediates”. We chose some of the papers published in the 2018, that in our opinion are the most interesting in terms of possible industrial application.

Engineering the “missing link” in biosynthetic (-)-menthol production: bacterial isopulegone isomerase

The realization of a synthetic biology approach to microbial (1R,2S,5R)-(-)-menthol (1) production relies on the identification of a gene encoding an isopulegone isomerase (IPGI), the only enzyme in the Mentha piperita biosynthetic pathway as yet unidentified. We demonstrate that ∆5-3-ketosteroid isomerase (KSI) from Pseudomonas putida can act as an IPGI, producing (R)-(+)-pulegone ((R)-2) from (+)-cis-isopulegone (3). Using a robotics-driven semirational design strategy, we identified a key KSI variant encoding four active site mutations, which confer a 4.3-fold increase in activity ove ...