Biocatalysis articles within Nature

Featured

  • Article |

    A completely genetically encoded boronic-acid-containing designer enzyme was created and characterized using X-ray crystallography, high-resolution mass spectrometry and 11B NMR spectroscopy, allowing chemistry that is unknown in nature and currently not possible with small-molecule catalysts.

    • Lars Longwitz
    • , Reuben B. Leveson-Gower
    •  & Gerard Roelfes

  • Article |

    Enzyme-bound ketyl radicals derived from thiamine diphosphate are selectively generated through single-electron oxidation by a photoexcited organic dye and shown to lead to enantioselective radical acylation reactions.

    • Yuanyuan Xu
    • , Hongwei Chen
    •  & Xiaoqiang Huang

  • Article |

    The α-diazoester azaserine can be produced by Streptomyces albus engineered with a biosynthetic gene cluster and act as the carbene precursor for coupling with intracellularly produced styrene to generate unnatural amino acids containing a cyclopropyl group.

    • Jing Huang
    • , Andrew Quest
    •  & Jay D. Keasling

  • Article |

    NMR spectroscopy has been used to guide the directed evolution of myoglobin to a Kemp eliminase with high catalytic efficiency, outlining an approach that is likely to be generally applicable to other enzyme activities.

    • Sagar Bhattacharya
    • , Eleonora G. Margheritis
    •  & Ivan V. Korendovych

  • Article |

    A genetically encoded triplet photosensitizer is used to develop an efficient photoenzyme that can promote enantioselective intramolecular and bimolecular [2+2] cycloadditions by means of triplet energy transfer.

    • Jonathan S. Trimble
    • , Rebecca Crawshaw
    •  & Anthony P. Green

  • Article |

    Triplet photoenzymes developed through genetic encoding and directed evolution result in excited-state photocatalysts that provide a valuable approach to enantioselective photochemical synthesis.

    • Ningning Sun
    • , Jianjian Huang
    •  & Yuzhou Wu

  • Article |

    A highly chemoselective and enantioselective cross-electrophile coupling using ‘ene’-reductases is reported, and photoexcited enzymes demonstrate the ability to carry out reactions between electrophiles that are not known for small-molecule catalysis.

    • Haigen Fu
    • , Jingzhe Cao
    •  & Todd K. Hyster

  • Review Article |

    Recent progress in computational enzyme design, active site engineering and directed evolution are reviewed, highlighting methodological innovations needed to deliver improved designer biocatalysts.

    • Sarah L. Lovelock
    • , Rebecca Crawshaw
    •  & Anthony P. Green

  • Article |

    A biocatalytic enzyme originating from bacteria, EneIRED, facilitates amine-activated conjugate alkene reduction followed by reductive amination, efficiently preparing chiral amine diastereomers, which are commonly used in pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals. 

    • Thomas W. Thorpe
    • , James R. Marshall
    •  & Nicholas J. Turner

  • Article |

    A study presents a biocatalytic method for the formation of sterically hindered biaryl bonds, providing a tunable approach for assembling molecules with catalyst-controlled reactivity, site selectivity and atroposelectivity.

    • Lara E. Zetzsche
    • , Jessica A. Yazarians
    •  & Alison R. H. Narayan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Structural and spectroscopic studies show how a B12-dependent radical SAM enzyme catalyses unique and challenging alkylation chemistry, including protein post-translational modification required for methane biosynthesis.

    • Cameron D. Fyfe
    • , Noelia Bernardo-García
    •  & Olivier Berteau

  • Article |

    Discovery of a near-complete colchicine biosynthetic pathway enables the engineered production of the tropolone-containing alkaloid N-formyldemecolcine from amino acid precursors in Nicotiana benthamiana.

    • Ryan S. Nett
    • , Warren Lau
    •  & Elizabeth S. Sattely

  • Article |

    A transformation in which an ‘ene’ reductase catalyses the visible-light-induced intermolecular radical hydroalkylation of alkenes gives carbonyl compounds with a remote stereocentre in high yield and enantioselectivity.

    • Xiaoqiang Huang
    • , Binju Wang
    •  & Huimin Zhao

  • Article |

    Computer-aided engineering produces improvements to an enzyme that breaks down poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) into its constituent monomers, which are used to synthesize PET of near-petrochemical grade that can be further processed into bottles.

    • V. Tournier
    • , C. M. Topham
    •  & A. Marty

  • Letter |

    A hydrolytic enzyme with a non-canonical organocatalytic mechanism was generated by introducing Nδ-methylhistidine into a designed active site using engineered translation components, allowing optimization of enzyme performance using laboratory evolution.

    • Ashleigh J. Burke
    • , Sarah L. Lovelock
    •  & Anthony P. Green

  • Letter |

    A genetically encoded platform can produce chiral organoboranes in bacteria with high turnover, enantioselectivity and chemoselectivity, and can be tuned and configured through DNA manipulation.

    • S. B. Jennifer Kan
    • , Xiongyi Huang
    •  & Frances H. Arnold

  • Letter |

    An artificial metalloenzyme is compartmentalized and evolved in vivo for olefin metathesis—an archetypal organometallic reaction without equivalent in nature; the evolved metathase reveals broad substrate scope and compares favourably with commercial catalysts.

    • Markus Jeschek
    • , Raphael Reuter
    •  & Thomas R. Ward

  • Letter |

    Replacing the iron atom in Fe-porphyrin IX proteins with a noble-metal atom enables the creation of enzymes that catalyse reactions not catalysed by native Fe-enzymes or other metalloenzymes; this approach could be used to generate other artificial enzymes that could catalyse a wide range of abiological transformations.

    • Hanna M. Key
    • , Paweł Dydio
    •  & John F. Hartwig

  • Article |

    Activation of the ventral medial prefrontal cortex–basomedial amygdala pathway is shown to suppress anxiety and fear-related freezing in mice, thus identifying the basomedial amygdala (and not intercalated cells, as posited by earlier models) as a novel target of top-down control.

    • Avishek Adhikari
    • , Talia N. Lerner
    •  & Karl Deisseroth

  • Letter |

    The X-ray crystal structures of FtmOx1, the first known α-ketoglutarate-dependent mononuclear non-haem iron enzyme that can catalyse an endoperoxide formation reaction, are presented, along with further biochemical analyses which reveal the catalytic versatility of mononuclear non-haem iron enzymes, and help to unravel the mechanisms of endoperoxide biosyntheses.

    • Wupeng Yan
    • , Heng Song
    •  & Yan Jessie Zhang

  • Article |

    The crystal structure of the 240-kilodalton C–P lyase core complex from the bacterium E. coli offers insights into the relatively unknown mechanisms of the enzymatic machinery that allows some microbes to extract phosphate from phosphonate compounds.

    • Paulina Seweryn
    • , Lan Bich Van
    •  & Ditlev E. Brodersen

  • Review Article |

    Over the past ten years, protein engineering has established biocatalysis as a practical and environmentally friendly alternative to traditional forms of catalysis both in the laboratory and in industry.

    • U. T. Bornscheuer
    • , G. W. Huisman
    •  & K. Robins

  • Article |

    MicroRNAs, which regulate gene expression, are transcribed as longer sequences that are processed to produce the mature form. Two nuclease enzymes, Drosha and Dicer, are known to act sequentially to trim the microRNA to size. Here, however, a subset of microRNAs that includes miR-451, important for erythropoiesis, is found to be processed independently of Dicer. Rather, the Argonaute protein — part of the complex that aligns microRNA and messenger RNA — carries out the secondary cleavage.

    • Sihem Cheloufi
    • , Camila O. Dos Santos
    •  & Gregory J. Hannon

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