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First Aid Kits are collections of the most important medical equipment required for quick medical assistance. Similarly, enzyme kits can provide a proficient, ready‐ and easy‐to‐use collection of biocatalysts that can be applied with high reproducibility. In this article, we illustrate how kits of oxyfunctionalisation enzymes could operate as synthetic 'First Aid' for chemists working on complex natural product total synthesis in an early‐ or late‐stage fashion, as well as in lead diversification in drug discovery processes. We reason that enzyme kits could catalyse the integration of biocatalysis into (synthetic) organic chemistry and describe how we envision their future application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biocatalysis, early-stage functionalisation, enzyme kits, late-stage functionalisation, lead diversification Cover Feature: Enzyme Kits to Facilitate the Integration of Biocatalysis into Organic Chemistry - First Aid for Synthetic Chemists (ChemCatChem 11/2022) Keywords: biocatalysis; early-stage functionalisation; enzyme kits; late-stage functionalisation; lead diversification EN biocatalysis early-stage functionalisation enzyme kits late-stage functionalisation lead diversification 1 1 1 06/10/22 20220608 NES 220608 B The Cover Feature b illustrates how enzyme kits function as proficient and readily available "First Aid" for synthetic chemists, to simplify syntheses of complex molecules complementary to conventional chemical methods. [Extracted from the article]

Halide assays are important for the study of enzymatic dehalogenation, a topic of great industrial and scientific importance. Here we describe the development of a very sensitive halide assay that can detect less than a picomole of bromide ions, making it very useful for quantifying enzymatic dehalogenation products. Halides are oxidised under mild conditions using the vanadium‐dependent chloroperoxidase from Curvularia inaequalis, forming hypohalous acids that are detected using aminophenyl fluorescein. The assay is up to three orders of magnitude more sensitive than currently available alternatives, with detection limits of 20 nM for bromide and 1 μM for chloride and iodide. We demonstrate that the assay can be used to determine specific activities of dehalogenases and validate this by comparison to a well‐established GC‐MS method. This new assay will facilitate the identification and characterisation of novel dehalogenases and may also be of interest to those studying other halide‐producing enzymes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]