Regulated preparation of Crocin-1 or Crocin-2′ Triggered by the Cosolvent DMSO Using Bs-GT/At-SuSy One-Pot Reaction

Crocins are the primary coloring ingredients of saffron. The low-glycosylated members of this compound family, such as crocin-1 (crocetin mono-glucosyl ester) and crocin-2′ (crocetin di-glucosyl ester), are rarely distributed in nature and attracting interest for their therapeutic uses. In the present study, a one-pot reaction system was used for efficient preparation of crocin-1 and crocin-2′ with in situ regeneration of UDP-Glc by coupling Bs-GT with At-SuSy, a sucrose synthase from Arabidopsis thaliana. Noticeably, DMSO was used as a cosolvent and resulted in improvement of the solubility of the substrate crocetin and regulation of the selectivity of glycosylation. With periodic addition of crocetin, the biosynthesis of crocin-2′ was performed with a high yield of 3.25 g/L in 2% DMSO aqueous solution, whereas crocin-1 (2.12 g/L) was selectively obtained in a 10% DMSO aqueous solution. The present study provided a simple approach for the biosynthesis of crocin-1 and crocin-2′.