Chemical Engineers Make Living Cells Combine Silicone and Carbon in Enzymes For The First Time Ever
9 replies, posted
[QUOTE=News]Now chemical engineers have discovered that living organisms can be nudged to bind carbon and silicon together. They showed that a natural enzyme from a bacterium that lives in hot springs can form C–Si bonds inside living [I]Escherichia coli [/I]cells — when the cells are fed the right silicon-containing compounds. And by engineering the enzyme, the researchers created a biological catalyst that performs the reaction more efficiently than any artificial one.
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Technical Abstract for Nerds:
[QUOTE=Abstract]Enzymes that catalyze carbon–silicon bond formation are unknown in nature, despite the natural abundance of both elements. Such enzymes would expand the catalytic repertoire of biology, enabling living systems to access chemical space previously only open to synthetic chemistry. We have discovered that heme proteins catalyze the formation of organosilicon compounds under physiological conditions via carbene insertion into silicon–hydrogen bonds. The reaction proceeds both in vitro and in vivo, accommodating a broad range of substrates with high chemo- and enantioselectivity. Using directed evolution, we enhanced the catalytic function of cytochrome c from [I]Rhodothermus marinus[/I] to achieve more than 15-fold higher turnover than state-of-the-art synthetic catalysts. This carbon–silicon bond-forming biocatalyst offers an environmentally friendly and highly efficient route to producing enantiopure organosilicon molecules.
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[URL="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6315/1048.full"]Full Technical Publication[/URL]
[URL]http://www.nature.com/news/living-cells-bind-silicon-and-carbon-for-the-first-time-1.21037[/URL]
The title should read "with enzymes" or "using enzymes". Enzymes are proteins; that means long chains of joined up amino acids. None of the amino acids contain silicon.
Did you get the title from the article?
op's title said silicone :sex101:
[QUOTE=Xakoro;51429743]The title should read "with enzymes" or "using enzymes". Enzymes are proteins; that means long chains of joined up amino acids. None of the amino acids contain silicon.
Did you get the title from the article?[/QUOTE]
The title's fine. Maybe a little weirder than it has to be, but it's like saying "bake cupcakes in ovens".
[QUOTE=AlienCreature;51429768]The title's fine. Maybe a little weirder than it has to be, but it's like saying "bake cupcakes in ovens".[/QUOTE]
Well its the opposite actually.
Its like saying hit a nail in a hammer, instead of with a hammer.
[URL="http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/explore/explore.do?structureId=3CP5"]This[/URL] is the wt crystal structure of the enzyme involved for those interested in such things. Their mutant doesn't have a structure yet, and they've swapped out a couple residues for some carboxylic acid bearing ones near the active site (right by the heme) which makes sense given how stable Si-O bonds are. It doesn't seem like they've figured out the mechanism just yet, but maybe they're holding onto it for their next publication.
The enzyme being a cytochrome C variant is kind of interesting. Cyt C's usually function as single electron "shuttles" and don't often catalyze reactions on their own. Even more interesting is that they got good yields with high (97+) enantiomeric excess with 20 substrates. This is the general reaction:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/n8DQxF8.png[/IMG]
R1 was changed extensively, but R2 and R3 less so. My wild guess would be sterics on that discrepancy, but that's almost always a safe bet :V
Neat little enzyme, and I'm excited at the prospects of maybe playing with new compounds derived from similar systems. This isn't making some new Si-based life form, just some neat biocatalysis of some silanes.
I wonder if it works with things bigger than methyl groups hanging off the silicon.
It would be fantastic (by definition) if we managed to synthesize self-replicating silicone structures.
Obviously a far away step from this, but I think it would be amazing for a 'proof of concept'.
A neat little advancement, will be cool to see what it could be used for once its more developed. Engineered proteins have a lot of potential for industrial use.
Scientific advancement has reached the point of complexity where I stop being able to understand [I]why[/I] something is cool, and instead just trust that it is.
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