Chiral 2-octanol is key synthetic intermediates for synthesis of liquid crystals, medicaments, agricultural chemicals and organic non-linear materials. The traditional preparation methods are esterification, hydrolysis and transesterification catalyzed by lipase. However, these methods have disadvantages of low enzymatic efficiency, complex procedure, resolution difficulty and environmental harmful intermediate products.

 To solve the problem, researchers with Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences firstly used Yarrowia Lipolytica Lipase (YYL) for the resolution of (R, S)-2-octanol and found the way to improve performance of YYL.

 The research team used surfactant to activate enzyme to get active conformation, and then effectively immobilized the active conformation on the hydrophobic carriers to prepare immobilized enzyme with super high activity for the resolution of (R, S)-2-octanol.

 The catalytic performance of YYL including activity, enantioselectivity, the ratio of substrate to enzyme, acetaldehyde tolerance, and operational stability was improved by the integrated strategy of interfacial activation, bioimprinting and immobilization.

 The results showed that YLL was effective for resolution of (R, S)-2-octanol preparation. The integrated strategy to enhance catalytic performance of YLL was developed and This work provided a promising resolution of (R, S)-2-octanol in practice. The research has been published on Bioresource Technology (2023, 142: 415-419).