ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on stereoselective access to α-hydroxy ketones, vicinal amino alcohols and diols. α-Hydroxy ketones are versatile building blocks for the pharmaceutical and chemical industry (Hoyos et al., 2010; Ward and Singh, 2000). Their bifunctional nature and the presence of one prochiral carbonyl group in addition to the stereocentre makes them amenable to further transformations (Sukumaran and Hanefeld, 2005) such as reductive amination or further reduction.Although these compounds are now accessible with high chemoselectivity via chemical synthesis, there is still a lack of highly stereoselective C-C bond forming approaches (Jin et al., 2011; O’Toole et al., 2011). This gap can be closed by biocatalytic approaches (Section 24.2.2.2), as the desired carboligation products can be obtained not merely with high yields but also with high chemo-and stereoselectivity (Gocke et al., 2008; Hailes et al., 2013; Müller et al., 2009).
