Inverting hydrolases and their use in enantioconvergent biotransformations

Owing to the more abundant occurrence of racemic compounds compared to prochiral or meso forms, most enantiomerically pure products are obtained via racemate resolution. This review summarizes (chemo)enzymatic enantioconvergent processes based on the use of hydrolytic enzymes, which are able to invert a stereocenter during catalysis that can overcome the 50%-yield limitation of kinetic resolution. Recent developments are presented in the fields of inverting or retaining sulfatases, epoxide hydrolases and dehalogenases, which allow the production of secondary alcohols or vicinal diols at a 100% theoretical yield from a racemate via enantioconvergent processes.