Significantly improved oxidation of bio-based furans into furan carboxylic acids using substrate-adapted whole cells

Abstract

Abstract Furan carboxylic acids are important building blocks in polymer and fine chemical industries. In this work, a simple substrate adaptation strategy was applied to improve the catalytic performances of Comamonas testosteroni SC1588 cells for the synthesis of various furan carboxylic acids. It was found that biocatalytic synthesis of 5-hydroxymethyl-2-furancarboxylic acid (HMFCA) was substantially promoted by adding histidine and increasing cell concentrations. HMFCA was produced in a quantitative yield from 200 mM HMF in 24 h. Besides, the HMFCA yields of 71%–81% were achieved with the substrate concentrations up to 250–300 mM. It was firstly found that 4-tert-butylcatechol (TBC), as the stabilizer present in HMF, exerted a significantly detrimental effect on whole-cell catalytic synthesis of HMFCA at high substrate concentrations (more than 130 mM). In addition, a variety of furan carboxylic acids such as 2-furoic acid, 5-methyl-2-furancarboxylic acid and 5-methoxymethyl-2-furancarboxylic acid were synthesized with the yields up to 98%.