Will the world's chemical factories smell like beach vacations in the future?
Research team finds approach to how algae can help in the production of everyday chemicals
chemicals containing chlorine are an integral part of our everyday lives. However, chlorination, i.e. the incorporation of chlorine into compounds, is difficult and often a burden for humans and the environment, but can hardly be replaced. A team led by chemist Tanja Gulder from Saarland University has now made a discovery that could pave the way for the environmentally friendly chlorination of chemical compounds, such as plastics or pharmaceuticals - thanks to blue-green algae. Their method has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
Many products that we use in our daily lives contain chlorine atoms, which significantly determine their properties. They are everywhere, from disinfectants in swimming pools, plastics and clothing to numerous medicines. Without chlorine-containing substances, our modern life would not be possible. "Polyvinyl chloride, PVC, for example, would not exist if there was no chlorine in it," says Tanja Gulder, Professor of Organic Chemistry at Saarland University. However, the introduction of chlorine atoms into the basic compounds, known as chlorination, which is necessary for the production of such everyday materials, is very problematic: "Chlorine gas is toxic for us, and chlorination using chlorine gas is also not very environmentally friendly," explains the chemist.
Thanks to her research, however, this could change in the future. Tanja Gulder and her team have found a way to chlorinate compounds without using toxic and environmentally harmful chlorine gas. They looked at an enzyme that has actually been known for a long time. However, until now all scientists have simply not looked at the right part of the enzyme. Put simply, the music in the enzyme during chlorination does not play at the point where experts actually expect it to.
The enzyme is a so-called vanadium-dependent haloperoxidase, or VHPO for short, which contains vanadate, a salt of the element vanadium. "These enzymes are mainly found in blue and brown algae and are responsible for the typical 'seaweed smell' when the algae lie on the beach," explains Tanja Gulder. Like all enzymes, this interesting enzyme has a so-called active center that reacts when a catalytic reaction is initiated, in the case of algae a bromination. Therefore, the enzyme is basically also suitable for use in chlorination. However, it has to be made to do this, as it does not do this naturally. "To achieve this, everyone has always looked at the active center of the blue-green algae enzyme. But no one has yet figured out exactly what happens. That's why we haven't been able to use the VHPOs to find environmentally friendly alternatives to chlorination with chlorine gas," says Tanja Gulder about the current state of affairs.
"However, we have now looked at certain protein sequences of these VHPOs with bioinformaticians from Leipzig University and discovered something completely new. Interestingly, the changes in the molecule did not take place in the active center when we exchanged amino acids in the computer model to find out which one is best suited to initiate chlorination," says the scientist. Instead, the molecular structures changed outside the active site, which had previously been the focus of scientists worldwide.
"So far, we have simply always looked at the wrong place in the protein," Tanja Gulder states soberly. "This is something completely new that we have never seen before in this class of enzymes," she says of the discovery, which has now been published in the high-ranking journal Nature Communications. "It's perhaps comparable to a car in which you change the windshield wiper and it can now drive at 300 km/h instead of 150 km/h!"
Now that experts know where to look in order to specifically initiate chlorination of the blue-green algae enzyme, this also offers the opportunity to research new, environmentally friendly chlorination processes that could do without the use of toxic chlorine gas. If, in the future, chemical factories around the world smell like beach vacations, we will know why.
Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.
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