Methods for the preparation of β-amino acids

Abstract

Purified β-amino acids are of considerable interest in the preparation of pharmacologically active compounds and industrial precursors. Although enantiomerically pure β-amino acids can be produced by standard chemical synthesis, this traditional approach is time consuming, requires expensive starting materials, and results in a racemic mixture which must be purified further. However, DNA molecules encoding lysine 2,3-aminomutase can be used to prepare β-amino acids by methods that avoid the pitfalls of chemical synthesis. The present invention provides a method of producing enantiomerically pure β-amino acids from α-amino acids comprising catalyzing the conversion of an α-amino acid to a corresponding β-amino acid by utilizing a lysine 2,3-aminomutase as the catalyst.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.