Biography
Biography: Anju Chadha
Abstract
Biocatalysis, an important ‘green’ component of sustainable chemistry, primarily, implies the use of enzymes in synthetic organic chemistry. It has been projected that the industry method of synthesizing 20% of the global production of non-natural chemicals by 2020 will employ biocatalyst- mediated reactions. The use of whole cells of Candida parapsilosis ATCC 7330 has been effectively used by us to generate a variety of optically pure sec. alcohols and amines by deracemisation and asymmetric reduction, which have also been used as chiral synthons in a larger synthetic scheme. This yeast has been shown to oxidise primary and sec. alcohols and also has acylase activity. All these results in high ee [up to 99%] and yields [up to 85%]. Parallely, we have crystallised a carbonyl reductase from the Candida in order to understand the enantioselectivity of the enzyme at the molecular level. The talk will summarize our results.