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Biocatalytic reduction of ketones in a secondary school laboratory Cover

Biocatalytic reduction of ketones in a secondary school laboratory

Open Access
|Jan 2018

Abstract

Biocatalysis is one of the most important industrial methods which has been increasingly attracting attention of scientists as a new and environmentally acceptable method. It is used in the preparation of chiral alcohols - important building blocks for the synthesis of fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and analogues of natural substances. In biocatalysis the use of traditional chiral agents based on heavy metals has been replaced by the use of enzymes. In many cases, the number of reaction steps has been limited, the selectivity of the desired products has been increased while the negative impact on the environment has been reduced. The principles of biocatalysis have been applied by us to design a simple chemical experiment for the students of higher secondary education. The modified assignment of a lab task consisted of bioreduction of 4-nitroacetophenone using the enzymes present in plant tissues of carrot, parsley and white radish. Within our pedagogical research, the adequacy of the chemical experiment for secondary school students was examined and the extent of understanding of the green chemistry experiment was analysed by the method of a semi-structured interview.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/cdem-2017-0007 | Journal eISSN: 2084-4506 | Journal ISSN: 1640-9019
Language: English
Page range: 123 - 133
Published on: Jan 27, 2018
Published by: Society of Ecological Chemistry and Engineering
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 2 issues per year
Related subjects:

© 2018 Dominika Lacušková, Anna Drozdíková, published by Society of Ecological Chemistry and Engineering
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.