Single amino acid exerts “remote control” over double bond placement by desaturase enzymes.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden have discovered how an enzyme “knows” where to insert a double bond when desaturating plant fatty acids. Understanding the mechanism — which relies on a single amino acid far from the enzyme’s active site — solves a 40-year mystery of how these enzymes exert such location-specific control. The work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of September 19, 2011, may lead to new ways to engineer plant oils as a renewable replacement for petrochemicals.
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