Simple enzymatic procedure for l‐carnosine synthesis: whole‐cell biocatalysis and efficient biocatalyst recycling

β‐Peptides and their derivates are usually stable to proteolysis and have an increased half‐life compared with α‐peptides. Recently, β‐aminopeptidases were described as a new enzyme class that enabled the enzymatic degradation and formation of β‐peptides. As an alternative to the existing chemical synthesis routes, the aim of the present work was to develop a whole‐cell biocatalyst for the synthesis and production of β‐peptides using this enzymatic activity. For the optimization of the reaction system we chose the commercially relevant β,α‐dipeptide l‐carnosine (β‐alanine‐l‐histidine) as model product. We were able to show that different recombinant yeast and bacteria strains, which overexpress a β‐peptidase, could be used directly as whole‐cell biocatalysts for the synthesis of l‐carnosine. By optimizing relevant reaction conditions for the best‐performing recombinant Escherichia coli strain, such as pH and substrate concentrations, we obtained high l‐carnosine yields of up to 71%. Long‐time as well as biocatalyst recycling experiments indicated a high stability of the developed biocatalyst for at least five repeated batches. Application of the recombinant E. coli in a fed‐batch process enabled the accumulation of l‐carnosine to a concentration of 3.7 g l(−1).