UCLA

Nature harnesses exquisite enzymatic cascades to construct N-heterocycles and further uses these building blocks to assemble the molecules of life. Here we report an enzymatic platform to construct important chiral N-heterocyclic products, pyrrolidines and indolines, via abiological intramolecular C(sp³)-H amination of organic azides. Directed evolution of cytochrome P411 (a P450 enzyme with serine as the heme-ligating residue) yielded variant P411-PYS-5149, capable of catalyzing the insertion of alkyl nitrene into C(sp³)-H bonds to build pyrrolidine derivatives with good enantioselectivity and catalytic efficiency. Further evolution of activity on aryl azide substrates yielded variant P411-INS-5151 that catalyzes intramolecular C(sp³)-H amination to afford chiral indolines. In addition, we show that these enzymatic aminations can be coupled with a P411-based carbene transferase or a tryptophan synthase to generate an α-amino lactone or a noncanonical amino acid, respectively, underscoring the power of new-to-nature biocatalysis in complexity-building chemical synthesis.