Sulfation made easy: A new versatile donor for enzymatic sulfation by a bacterial arylsulfotransferase

•A novel sulfate donor for the enzymatic sulfation of phenolic compounds is reported.•This donor replaces the commonly used rather toxic P-nitrophenyl sulfate.•Higher yields are obtained and purification of the sulfated compounds is simple.

An efficient and versatile donor for the sulfation by a bacterial arylsulfotransferase of various phenolic acceptor molecules is reported. Most studies in the past used toxic p-nitrophenyl sulfate as a sulfate donor for sulfation by this enzyme. However both the donor and p-nitrophenol are difficult to remove from the sulfated products. This new donor N-hydroxysuccinimide sulfate is easy to synthesize and has the advantage that at pH values above 7 it hydrolyzes to N-hydroxysuccinimide which is a safe compound and can easily be removed. As examples we demonstrated the formation of sulfated resveratrol and synthesized efficiently 3-sulfo-17-β-estradiol and bisphenol A bisulfate. It is likely that many other phenolic compounds are sulfated using this donor.

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