Biomass (ecology)

Catalysis

Organic chemistry

Chemistry

Amino acid synthesis

Lysine

Leucine

Phenylalanine

Alanine

Amino acid

Biochemistry

Agronomy

Biology

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Significance Today, amino acids are primarily manufactured via microbial cultivation processes, which are costly, are time consuming, and require extensive separations processes. As an alternative, chemocatalytic approaches to produce amino acids from renewable feedstocks such as bio-based sugars could offer a rapid and potentially more efficient means of amino acid synthesis, but efforts to date have been limited by the development of facile chemistry and associated catalyst materials to selectively produce α-amino acids. In this work, various α-amino acids, including alanine, leucine, aspartic acid, and phenylalanine, were obtained from both biomass-derived α-hydroxyl acids and glucose. The route bridges plant-based biomass and proteinogenic α-amino acids, offering a chemical approach that is potentially superior to microbial cultivation processes.

Catalytic amino acid production from biomass-derived intermediates