Enantioselection effected by commercially available hydrolytic enzymes reported in recent years from our own laboratory and those published by other groups is described. The discussion is confined to enantioselection in symmetric diols, amino acids and benzopyran derivatives only. The paper describes a variety of substrates accepted by these hydrolytic enzymes to produce compounds in high enantiomeric excess which can be used as chiral building blocks for the synthesis of compounds of pharmaceutical and synthetic interest.
