Chiral heterocyclic alcohols are important precursors for production of pharmaceutical medicines and natural products. (S)-1-(furan-2-yl)propan-1-ol ((S)-2) can be used production of pyranone, which can be used in the synthesis of sugar analogues, antibiotics, tirantamycines, and anticancer drugs. The synthetic approaches for (S)-2, however, have substantial difficulties in terms of inadequate enantiomeric excess (ee) and gram scale synthesis. Moreover, the biocatalytic synthesis of (S)-2 is unknown until now. In this study, the synthesis of (S)-2 was carried out by performing the asymmetric bioreduction of 1-(furan-2-yl)propan-1-one (1) using the Lactobacillus paracasei BD101 biocatalyst obtained from boza, a grain-based fermented beverage. (S)-2 was obtained with >99% conversion, >99% ee, and 96% yield under the optimized conditions. Furthermore, in 50 h, 8.37 g of 1 was entirely transformed into (S)-2 on gram scale (96% isolated yield, 8.11 g). This is the first report on the high-gram scale biocatalyzed synthesis of enantiopure (S)-2. These data suggest that L. paracasei BD101 can be used to bioreduction of 1 in gram scale and efficiently produce (S)-2. Furthermore, these findings laid the base for future study into the biocatalytic production of (S)-2. It was particularly notable as it was the highest known to date optical purity of (S)-2 generated by asymmetric reduction using a biocatalyst. This work offers a productive environmentally friendly method for producing (S)-2 using biocatalysts.
