High-titer production of aromatic amines in metabolically engineered Escherichia coli

Aromatic amines are widely used in the pharmaceutical industry. Here, we reported the establishment of a bacterial platform for synthesizing three types of aromatic amines, namely, tyramine, dopamine, and phenylethylamine. Firstly, we expressed aromatic amino acid decarboxylase from Enterococcus faecium (pheDC) in an Escherichia coli strain with an increased shikimate (SHK) pathway flux toward L-tyrosine or L-phenylalanine synthesis. We found that glycerol served as a better carbon source than glucose, resulting in 940 mg/L tyramine from 4% glycerol. Next, the genes of lactate dehydrogenase (ldhA), formate acetyltransferase (pflB), phosphate acetyltransferase (pta), and alcohol dehydrogenase (adhE) were deleted to mitigate the fermentation byproduct formation. The tyramine level was further increased to 1.965 g/L in shake flasks, corresponding to 2.1 times improvement compared with that of the parental strain. By using a similar strategy, we also managed to produce 703 mg/L dopamine and 555 mg/L phenethylamine. In summary, we have demonstrated that the knockout of ldhA-pflB-pta-adhE is an effective strategy in improving aromatic amine productions, and achieved the highest aromatic amine titers in E. coli under shake flasks reported to date.

Cu-Catalyzed Allylation of Amines with Cyclopropyldiphenylsulfonium Trifluoromethanesulfonate

Cyclopropyldiphenylsulfonium salt is a famous ylide precursor that was previously extensively employed in the preparation of cyclic compounds and has been successfully utilized as an efficient allylation reagent in this work. The Cu-catalyzed reactions of cyclopropyldiphenylsulfonium trifluoromethanesulfonate with amines in the presence of an appropriate ligand provided the N-allylated products in good yields. Aliphatic/aromatic amines and primary/secondary amines were all mildly converted under the reaction conditions. This protocol was also applicable to N-functionalization of drug molecules, supplying the corresponding N-allylated compounds in satisfactory yields. The reaction showed good functional group tolerance, a wide range of substrates, and excellent chemoselectivity, which offered an interesting method for the synthesis of N-allyl amines.