U.S. Department of Eneryg/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) Although many organisms capture and respond to sunlight, enzymes – proteins that catalyze biochemical reactions – are rarely driven by light. Scientists have identified only three types of natural photoenzymes so far. The newest one, discovered in 2017, is fatty acid photodecarboxylase (FAP). Derived from microscopic algae, it uses blue light to catalyze the conversion of fatty acids, found in fats and oils, into alkanes and alkenes.
“A growing number of labs envision using FAPs for green chemistry applications, because alkanes and alkenes are important components of solvents and fuels, including gasoline and jet fuels. And the transformation of fatty acids into alkanes or alkenes happens in a single step within the enzyme,” says Martin Weik, the leader of a research group at the Institute of Biologie Structurale at the Universite Grenoble Alpes.
(European Synchrotron Radiation Facility/Phys.Org) The functioning of the enzyme FAP, useful for producing biofuels and for green chemistry, has been decrypted. This result mobilized an international team of scientists, including many French researchers from the CEA, CNRS, Inserm, École Polytechnique, the universities of Grenoble Alpes, Paris-Saclay and Aix Marseille, as well as the European Synchrotron (ESRF) and synchrotron SOLEIL. The study is published in
Science on April 09, 2021.
The researchers decrypted the operating mechanisms of FAP (Fatty Acid Photodecarboxylase), which is naturally present in microscopic algae such as Chlorella. The enzyme had been identified in 2017 as able to use light energy to form hydrocarbons from fatty acids produced by these microalgae. To achieve this new result, research teams used a complete experimental and theoretical toolkit.