Wallace, StephenBalskus, Emily2017-07-142015Wallace, Stephen, and Emily P. Balskus. 2015. “Interfacing Microbial Styrene Production with a Biocompatible Cyclopropanation Reaction.” Angewandte Chemie International Edition 54 (24) (April 29): 7106–7109. doi:10.1002/anie.201502185.1433-7851http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33445941Introducing new reactivity into living organisms is a major challenge in synthetic biology. Despite an increasing interest in both developing aqueous-compatible small molecule catalysts and engineering enzymes to perform new chemistry in vitro, the integration of non-native reactivity into metabolic pathways for small molecule production has been underexplored. Herein we report a biocompatible iron(III) phthalocyanine catalyst capable of efficient olefin cyclopropanation in the presence of a living microorganism. By interfacing this catalyst with E. coli engineered to produce styrene, we synthesize non-natural phenyl cyclopropanes directly from D-glucose in single-vessel fermentations. This process represents the first combination of non-biological carbene-transfer reactivity with cellular metabolism for small molecule production.en-USphthalocyanineironmetabolismsynthetic biologysynthetic methodsJournal Article2017-05-1120152017-07-1410.1002/anie.201502185