Optically active aryl alcohols are one kind of the most important chiral building blocks for many single enantiomer pharmaceuticals.Asymmetric reduction of corresponding prochiral ketone to chiral alcohol by active yeast cells is one of the most promising routes
but the space-time productivity is very low due to the toxicity of the substrate and product to the cell,which prohibits the reaction from proceeding at a high substrate concentration.The toxicity of aryl ketone to yeast cell and increasing the initial substrate concentration by introducing macropore adsorbing resin to avoid the toxicity to the cell was studied,when asymmetric reduction of acetophenone(ACP)to chiral α-phenylethyl alcohol(PEA)by Saccharomyces cerevisiae was chosen as the model reaction.The experiments showed that the substrate and product did have obvious toxicity to yeast cell.This reaction could be remarkably improved with introducing the appropriate kind of resin.The initial ACP concentration could be increased to 70 mmol·L-1 when the appropriate amount of resin was used.