What is it about?

The non-proteinogenic natural amino acid L-argininosuccinate, a key metabolite of L-arginine metabolism, has been prepared by simply running part of the urea cycle in reverse and thereby making use of an enzyme, argininosuccinatelyase, to catalyze the condensation of L-arginine with fumarate.

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Why is it important?

It has been important to make the key metabolite L-argininosuccinate available as pure product in order to study thefunction of involved enzyems and metabolic pathways in health and diesease. On the way to developing the best synthetic route, we came across nature's wonderful biocatalytic asymmetric Michael addition reaction to prepare this key metabolite.

Perspectives

This not only provides a straightforward one-step route to L-argininosuccinic acid lithium salt without side-products, but also opens great future opportunities for utilizing biocatalytic asymmetric Michael addition reactions for simple synthetic routes with high molecular economy to complex metabolites using simple building blocks.

Dr Roland Wohlgemuth
Sigma-Aldrich, Member of Merck Group

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This page is a summary of: Biocatalytic asymmetric Michael addition reaction ofl-arginine to fumarate for the green synthesis of N-(([(4S)-4-amino-4-carboxy-butyl]amino)iminomethyl)-l-aspartic acid lithium salt (l-argininosuccinic acid lithium salt), RSC Advances, January 2017, Royal Society of Chemistry,
DOI: 10.1039/c7ra10236d.
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