Highly selective resolution of racemic 1-phenyl-1,2-ethanediol by a novel strain Kurthia gibsonii SC0312.

Chiral 1-phenyl-1,2-ethanediol (PED) performs vital effect for the preparation of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and cosmetics. In the study, a newly isolated strain Kurthia gibsonii SC0312 with the ability to selectively oxidize racemic PED to achieve (S)-PED was evaluated in the aqueous reaction system. The strain showed excellent catalytic performances within the range of pH 5.5-8.5, temperature 25-45 °C and the amount of cell 15 mg mL-1 to 30 mg mL-1 . Besides, 2-hydroxyacetophenone (HAP) as the oxidation product displayed a stronger inhibition to the catalytic activity of cell, only remaining less than 63% of catalytic activity after incubation at 40 mmol L-1 HAP for 6 h. For various metal ions, Cu2+ can obviously improve 1.7 times of the catalytic activity of cell at the concentration of 0.2 mmol L-1 . Acetone can stimulate the catalytic capacity of cell to improve the optical purity of (S)-PED at the PED concentration of 80 mM, up to appropriately 94% from 85.4%; compared to the resting cell, growing cell exerted no positive effect in the yield and optical purity. Finally, a highly effective kinetic resolution system of racemic PED by the new strain was obtained, with the (S)-PED yield of 41% and optical purity of 94%. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.