Preparation of enantiomerically pure (R)-3-hydroxybutyrate

Enantiomerically pure hydroxycarboxylic acids have great potential as chiral building blocks in fine chemicals due to their easily modificable two functional groups. Microbial polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) can have more than one hundred of hydroxycarboxylic acids as monomeric constituents by growing cells under various conditions. All of the monomeric constituents are enantiomerically pure in (R)-conformation if there is a chiral center. Therefore, efficient production of enantiomerically pure hydroxycarboxylic acids by degrading PHAs is possible. In this presentation, we report on the development of a novel method for the preparation of (R)-hydroxybutyric acid by in vivo depolymerization of Polyhydroxybutyrae.