Effective asymmetric preparation of (R)-1-[3-(trifluoromethyl)phenyl]ethanol with recombinant E. coli whole cells in an aqueous Tween-20/natural deep eutectic solvent solution

( R )-1-[3-(Trifluoromethyl)phenyl]ethanol (( R )-MTF-PEL) is an important chiral building block for the synthesis of a neuroprotective compound, ( R )-3-(1-(3-(trifluoromethyl)phenyl)ethoxy)azetidine-1-carboxamide. In this work, an effective whole-cell-catalyzed biotransformation was developed to produce ( R )-MTF-PEL, and its productivity was increased by medium engineering strategy. The recombinant E. coli BL21(DE3)-pET28a(+) - LXCAR-S154Y...