Enzymatic Synthesis of Modified Nucleoside 5′-Monophosphates

Abstract

There is an extensive list of applications for nucleosides, nucleotides, and their analogues that spans from substrates and inhibitors in enzymatic research to anticancer and antiviral drugs. Nucleoside phosphates are often obtained by chemical phosphorylation reactions, although enzymatic nucleoside phosphorylation is a promising green alternative. In this work two nucleoside kinases, D. melanogaster deoxynucleoside kinase and B. subtilis deoxycytidine kinase, have been employed for the phosphorylation of various canonical and modified nucleosides, and the results between the two enzymes have been compared. It was determined that both kinases are suitable candidates for enzymatic nucleoside 5′-monophosphate synthesis, as the reaction yields are often in the 40–90% range. Deoxynucleoside kinase, however, often outperforms deoxycytidine kinase and accepts a wider range of nucleoside analogues as substrates. Hence, deoxynucleoside kinase and deoxycytidine kinase were active towards 43 and 34 of 57 tested compounds, respectively. Both nucleoside kinases have been also tested for a larger-scale synthesis of nucleoside monophosphates in the presence of a GTP regeneration system using acetate kinase from E. coli.