Roland Wohlgemuth

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Roland Wohlgemuth studied chemistry and biology at the University of Basel in Switzerland and obtained his Ph.D. at the Biocenter of the same university in 1979 working with Prof. Seelig on fundamental aspects of the structure and function of biological cell membranes. From 1980 to 1983 he moved to the University of California in Berkeley and did postdoctoral work on artificial photosynthesis with Prof. Melvin Calvin at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and at UC Berkeley with a Swiss National Science Foundation Award followed by a two-year employment by the US Department of Energy. In 1983 Roland Wohlgemuth moved back to Buchs in Switzerland, where he built up biochemistry/biotechnology in the chemical company Fluka, which in 1989 became part of the Sigma-Aldrich Corporation, the acquisition by Merck has been completed in November 2015. His main interests have been in industrial innovation at the biology-chemistry-engineering interface, biocatalysis, glycobiology, metabolomics, protein analysis, bioanalytical technologies in general and in particular the development of tools and reagents for structural and functional analysis of proteins and their post-translational modification. While working at Sigma-Aldrich he has started a global initiative to develop methodologies for the analysis and preparation of central and remote metabolites. Since 2017 he has been at the Institute of Technical Biochemistry, now the Institute of Molecular and Industrial Biotechnology, of Lodz University of Technology, where he is teaching courses for bachelor, master and PhD students. His research interests continue to be at the molecular and engineering interface of medicine-biology-chemistry, in the areas of biocatalysis, glycobiology, metabolomics, protein analysis, bioanalytical technologies, molecular medicine, technical biochemistry, industrial biotechnology and bioeconomy.
Address: Technical University Lodz
Institute of Molecular and Industrial Biotechnology
Stefanowskiego Street 2/22
90-537 Lodz
Poland

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Guidelines for reporting of biocatalytic reactions

by Lucia Gardossi, Antonio O Ballesteros, and Roland Wohlgemuth

Trends in Biotechnology, 2010

Enzymes and whole cells are being increasingly applied in research and industry, but the adoption... more Enzymes and whole cells are being increasingly applied in research and industry, but the adoption of biocatalysis relies strongly on useful scientific literature. Unfortunately, too many published papers lack essential information needed to reproduce and understand the results. Here, members of the scientific committee of the European Federation of Biotechnology Section on Applied Biocatalysis (ESAB) provide practical guidelines for reporting experiments. The document embraces the recommendations of the STRENDA initiative (Standards for Reporting Enzymology Data) in the context of pure enzymology and provides further guidelines and explanations on topics of crucial relevance for biocatalysis. In particular, guidelines are given on issues such as the selectivity, specificity, productivity and stability of biocatalysts, as well as on methodological problems related to reactions in multiphase systems. We believe that adoption and use of these guidelines could greatly increase the value and impact of published work in biocatalysis, and hence promote the further growth of applications.

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Swiss Industrial Biocatalysis Consortium (SIBC)

by Hans-Peter Meyer and Roland Wohlgemuth

CHIMIA International Journal for Chemistry, 2010

Taking up the common challenges in biocatalysis, a group of industrialists decided to react with ... more Taking up the common challenges in biocatalysis, a group of industrialists decided to react with a bottom-up solution, and created the Swiss Industrial Biocatalysis Consortium (SIBC). The Swiss Industrial Biocatalysis Consortium is a pre-competitive working group to better implement and utilize existing know-how and resources in biocatalysis, and to influence and shape the economic and educational political environment. Recent examples of activities are outlined.

Biocatalysis—key to sustainable industrial chemistry

Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 2010

The ongoing trends to process improvements, cost reductions and increasing quality, safety, healt... more The ongoing trends to process improvements, cost reductions and increasing quality, safety, health and environment requirements of industrial chemical transformations have strengthened the translation of global biocatalysis research work into industrial applications. One focus has been on biocatalytic single-step reactions with one or two substrates, the identification of bottlenecks and molecular as well as engineering approaches to overcome these bottlenecks. Robust industrial procedures have been established along classes of biocatalytic single-step reactions. Multi-step reactions and multi-component reactions (MCRs) enable a bottom-up approach with biocatalytic reactions working together in one compartment and recations hindering each other within different compartments or steps. The understanding of the catalytic functions of known and new enzymes is key for the development of new sustainable chemical transformations.

The locks and keys to industrial biotechnology

New Biotechnology, 2009

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HPM et al CS&T SIBC Paper 2013

The potential of biotechnology by means of biocatalysis or biosynthesis in organic synthesis is f... more The potential of biotechnology by means of biocatalysis or biosynthesis in organic synthesis is far from being fully exploited. For this reason a group of life science companies active in pharmaceuticals, flavour and fragrance, vitamin and fine chemicals businesses describe some examples of the use of enzymes in industrial organic synthesis and discuss why enzymes are still the exception rather than the rule in organic synthesis.

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Industrial Biotransformation

Bioprocess, Bioseparation, and Cell Technology, 2009

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The use of enzymes in organic synthesis and the life sciences: perspectives from the Swiss Industrial Biocatalysis Consortium (SIBC)

Catalysis Science & Technology, 2012

High-Yield Biocatalytic Amination Reactions in Organic Synthesis

Curr Org Chem 14 1914 1927, Oct 1, 2010

The amino functionality gives important biological activity in pharmaceutical com-pounds. The for... more The amino functionality gives important biological activity in pharmaceutical com-pounds. The formation of chiral amines and amino acids can be accomplished by seve-ral chemical routes but enzymatic formation of amines offers many advantages in pre-paring chiral amino compounds or amination of fragile compounds compared to stoi-chiometric or catalytic chemical transformations. Biocatalytic routes to amines primarily use enzymes of the transaminase class (also known as aminotransferases) which transfer the amino function from a donor organic compound to a ketone or aldehyde acceptor. Although known since 1937, the transamination reaction experiences re-newed interest due to the advances in biochemistry and molecular biology and the excellent selectivity of biocatalysts. Other enzymes that have been used to synthesize chiral amines are from the phenylalanine ammonia lyase class that use ammonia as the amino source. The use of recombinant enzymes for the biocatalytic preparation of amines is expanding at a great rate and the range of enzymes revealed in DNA se-quence databases is of the order of tens of thousands. Since a large number of ketone substrates like ketones, hydroxyketones and ketoacids can be made by chemical syn-thesis, the growing toolbox of -, -, -, -, -and -transaminases enable the synthe-sis of various new chemical entities by biocatalytic amination reactions. In order to simplify the isolation and purification of the product, it is useful to drive the amination reaction to completion. The biocatalytic processes that have been developed show different strategies of overcoming the kinetic limitations of the transaminase reactions and show how some enzymes have been used in processes to make large quantities of chiral compounds with amino functionalities.

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Towards large-scale synthetic applications of Baeyer-Villiger monooxygenases

Trends in Biotechnology, Jan 7, 2003

Biocatalysis is coming of age, with an increasing number of reactions being scaled-up and develop... more Biocatalysis is coming of age, with an increasing number of reactions being scaled-up and developed. The diversity of reactions is also increasing and oxidation reactions have recently been considered for scale-up to commercial processes. One important chemical conversion, which is difficult to achieve enantio-or enantiotopo-selectively, is the Baeyer-Villiger (BV) oxidation of ketones. Using cyclohexanone monooxygenase to catalyse the reaction produces optically pure esters and lactones with exquisite enantiomeric excess values. Recently, these enzymes and their many applications in synthetic chemistry have been explored. The scale-up of these conversions has been examined with the idea of implementing the first commercial Baeyer-Villiger monooxygenase-based process. Here, we review the state-of-the-art situation for the scale-up and exploitation of these enzymes.

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Book Chapters by Roland Wohlgemuth

Transketolases

... over a few hours it may lead to foaming, damage to the enzyme or, if the enzyme is immobilize... more

Industrial biotransformation

ChemInform Abstract: Large-Scale Applications of Hydrolases in Biocatalytic Asymmetric Synthesis

ChemInform, 2011

ABSTRACT This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Chemistry Biocatalyst Process Screen... more

Asymmetric Baeyer-Villiger Reactions Using Whole-Cell Biocatalysts

Challenges, Approaches and Solutions, 2010

ABSTRACT This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Chemistry Biocatalysts Process Scree... more

Industrial Biotechnology in the Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries

Sustainable Growth and Economic Success, 2010

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Large-Scale Applications of Biocatalysis in the Asymmetric Synthesis of Laboratory Chemicals

Asymmetric Catalysis on Industrial Scale, 2003

Comprehensive Organic Synthesis II

Biocatalytic Asymmetric Oxidations with Oxygen

Modern Biocatalysis, 2008

ABSTRACT This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Biocatalytic Asymmetric Oxidations w... more ABSTRACT This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Biocatalytic Asymmetric Oxidations with Oxidases Biocatalytic Asymmetric Oxidations with Peroxidases Biocatalytic Asymmetric Oxidations with Dehydrogenases Biocatalytic Asymmetric Oxidations with Monooxygenases Biocatalytic Asymmetric Oxidations with Dioxygenases Biocatalytic Asymmetric Oxidations with Other Enzymes Outlook Acknowledgments References

Development of Sustainable Biocatalytic Reduction Processes for Organic Chemists

Synthetic Methods for Biologically Active Molecules, 2013

have received increased attention . Among the many synthetic methodologies available for reductio... more have received increased attention . Among the many synthetic methodologies available for reduction reactions, biocatalysis has become an attractive choice in organic chemistry due to progress in understanding fundamental structurefunction relationships and engineering of enzymes, their applications to organic synthesis, and developing novel enzymes to solve synthetic challenges in organic chemistry.

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Green Production of Fine Chemicals by Isolated Enzymes

Tao/Bioctalysis Green Chemistry, 2011

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Epoxide Hydrolysis

This chapter focusses on the selective biocatalytic ring-opening of epoxides by water, leading to... more This chapter focusses on the selective biocatalytic ring-opening of epoxides by water, leading to vicinal diols or other reaction products. It is worth noting that this strategy is also used by nature to prepare a range of important metabolites and natural products by epoxidehydrolase-catalyzed ring-opening reactions. The hydrolysis of easily accessible racemic epoxides to enantiomerically pure epoxides or vicinal diols has become of increasing interest to a great variety of chiral intermediates for the synthesis of pharmacologically active compounds, agrochemicals, flavors and fragrances and metabolites.

Roland Wohlgemuth

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