Catalytic Function and Application of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes in Biosynthesis and Organic Synthesis

Cytochrome P450 enzymes are widely distributed in nature, which mainly participate in xenobiotics metabolism and natural product biosynthesis. These enzymes are able to recognize various substrates to produce many useful oxidative products through diverse reaction types. P450 enzymes can catalyze selective oxidation of C-H bonds in their substrates under mild conditions. Therefore, a lot of P450 enzymes have been applied in the production of fine chemicals, drugs and chemical intermediates for quite a long time. With the development of protein engineering, redox partner engineering, substrate engineering, metabolic engineering and synthetic biology, it has become possible to obtain the P450 biocatalysts with the desired properties such as high activity, the substrate specificity of interest, and great selectivity to meet the industrial requirements, through rational design and direct evolution of P450 enzymes. Thus, the application scope of P450 enzymes in biosynthesis and organic synthesis has been expanded greatly. The types of reactions that can be catalyzed by P450 enzymes, and the strategies to broaden the reaction scope and to enhance the catalytic efficiency and selectivity are summarized. Finally, the challenges and prospects in the application of cytochrome P450 enzymes in biosynthesis and organic synthesis are discussed.