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Selective catalytic oxidations of organic molecules are among the most important technological processes in the synthetic chemistry as well as in the chemical industry for the preparation of many pharmaceuticals, vitamins, fragrances and dyestuffs (Hudlicky, 1990). However, despite great progress in organic synthesis in the last several decades, among varieties of catalysts the ones required in selective catalytic oxidations have the highest cost and the lowest selectivity, which brings the oxidation products tremendous difficulties in separation and purification (Cavani & Trifiro, 1992). On the other hand, alkanes instead of alkenes, which come from natural gas and crude oil, have gradually become the main raw materials of the chemical industry. Due to their intrinsically inert nature, the selective functionalization of alkanes is very difficult and consequently regarded as a key objective in the chemical industry (Sheldon & Kochi, 1981). Although the oxidation of alkanes is a thermodynamically favored process, it is difficult to do so in a controlled and selective fashion, since the oxidation products under the activation of oxygen atoms they involve are more active than the raw materials and prone to causing over-oxidation. Traditional oxidants such as chromates and permanganates can perform reactions of this type but are notoriously nonselective and must be used under forcing conditions. They have been discarded mainly due to their economic and environmental costs in favor of cheap oxidants such as air or peroxides, but these latter processes are extremely inefficient and require constant recycling of substrates (Costas et al., 2000). Thus increasing the efficiency and selectivity of hydrocarbon transformations, especially the activation of C—H bond of saturated hydrocarbons, has been the goal of both academic and industrial research efforts. Nature has already developed an excellent solution for the problem of the selective oxidation of organic substrates under particularly mild conditions, by utilizing as oxidant the most abundant, cheapest and cleanest one as possible, dioxygen, in the presence of metalloenzymes as catalysts (Wallar & Lipscomb, 1996; Que & Ho, 1996). Indeed, in the biological world, metal-containing proteins are able to perform oxidation reactions at room temperature under atmospheric pressure, even the hydroxylation of hydrocarbons, in spite of the relative inertness of the C—H bond in non-activated substrates. (Ricoux et al., 2007). These include non-heme enzymes, such as methane monooxygenase, which is able to |
