An engineered E. coli strain for direct in vivo fluorination
Abstract
Selectively fluorinated compounds are found frequently in pharmaceutical and agrochemical products where currently 25–30 % of optimised compounds emerge from development containing at least one fluorine atom. There are many methods for the site‐specific introduction of fluorine, but all are chemical and they often use environmentally challenging reagents. Biochemical processes for C−F bond formation are attractive, but they are extremely rare. In this work, the fluorinase enzyme, originally identified from the actinomycete bacterium Streptomyces cattleya, is engineered into Escherichia coli in such a manner that the organism is able to produce 5′‐fluorodeoxyadenosine (5′‐FDA) from S‐adenosyl‐l‐methionine (SAM) and fluoride in live E. coli cells. Success required the introduction of a SAM transporter and deletion of the endogenous fluoride efflux capacity in order to generate an E. coli host that has the potential for future engineering of more elaborate fluorometabolites.
Citation
Markakis , K , Lowe , P T , Davison-Gates , L , O'Hagan , D , Rosser , S J & Elfick , A 2020 , ' An engineered E. coli strain for direct in vivo fluorination ' , ChemBioChem , vol. Early View . https://doi.org/10.1002/cbic.202000051
Publication
ChemBioChem
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1439-4227Type
Journal article
Description
This work was funded by the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC) with support from GlaxoSmithKline, and also the EU Horizon 2020 (Sinfonia consortia).Collections
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