• Question: which is,in your opinion, the most unusual enzyme?

    Asked by Ten3ka to Andy, Chris, Harriet, Jess, Nikki on 16 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Harriet Reid

      Harriet Reid answered on 16 Mar 2016:

      Well they aren’t that unusual, but proteases are cool. They are a class of proteins that destroy other proteins, but somehow not themselves. They are the cannibals of the protein world!

    • Photo: Christopher Blanford

      Christopher Blanford answered on 16 Mar 2016:

      @Harriet: awesome answer and description.

      Hi Ten3ka

      One that I think is particularly neat if one researched by the director of my research institute. It’s called PETN reductase. PETN* is a high explosive. They found this enzyme in soil bacteria that were living in a place where weapons used to be manufactured. The enzyme breaks down the high-explosive to make less dangerous, and provides energy and nitrogen for the bacterium that produces that enzyme.

      Chris

      *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentaerythritol_tetranitrate

    • Photo: andy chapman

      andy chapman answered on 17 Mar 2016:

      I don’t know if we know what enzyme does this yet but at scientists at university collage london are trying to use bacterial to directly degrade plastic in the floating plastic islands that litter the ocean:

      https://www.ucl.ac.uk/biochemeng/about/iGEM

      This is amazing since normally plastic degradation always starts with ‘oxidation’ of the carbon-carbon bonds in plastic. It appears these bugs are producing enzymes that directly degrade carbon-carbon bonds (in polyethene for example). This is really weird as these types of bonds do not come up in nature much (the functional group is an alkane in chemistry) and they are really difficult to break up. It is a wonder why any enzyme would exist for this….thats evolution for you.

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