Advances in hydroxylation of aromatic compounds with oxygenase

Abstract

Aromatic oxygenases are able to catalyze the selective hydroxylation of aromatic compounds, and the hydroxylation products could be used as the major chemical intermediates. Therefore, these oxygenases are becoming the main objects in the fields of biotechnology and chemistry. Selective hydroxylation of aromatic compounds is among the most challenging chemical reactions in synthetic chemistry and has gained steadily increasing attention during recent years, particularly because of the use of hydroxylated aromatics as precursors for pharmaceuticals. Biocatalytic oxygen transfer by isolated enzymes or whole microbial cells is an elegant and efficient way to achieve selective hydroxylation. It plays an important role not only in the bioremediation of the polluted environment, but also in chemical synthesis. Those enzymes are one of the important industrial enzymes, and they can be applied in the production of oxidative materials directly or indirectly and can overcome many problems of chemical synthesis. The recent advances in the studies on the aromatic hydroxylation oxygenases, and their mechanism and application in industry are summarized in this paper.