Biotransformation of 5-en-3β-ol steroids by Mucor circinelloides lusitanicus

In this work, we report the mode of biotransformation of 5-en-3β-ol steroids using Mucor circinelloides lusitanicus for the first time. Here, we selected seven 5-en-3β-ol steroids as substrates. The main characteristic of the fungus was to introduce a 7α-hydroxyl group into substrates 1--5. With substrate 2, 3β, 7α, 11α-trihydroxypregna-5-en-20-one (2b) was obtained as the final product in good yield (46.4%). All the metabolites were determined by infrared spectra, high-resolution mass spectrometry, proton nuclear magnetic resonance, and carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance.