Diamentowy grant

An investigation regarding biochemical synthesis of styrene and its derivatives

The versatility of the utilization of polymeric materials (i. e. packaging, gaskets, construction materials, tires) makes it hard to imagine today’s’ world entirely without plastics. Currently used production methods of polymers depend on the processing of distillation products from petroleum in energetically costly chemical reactions, leading to the intensified exploitation of non-renewable natural resources. In order to tackle this issue, there have been attempts to develop an environmentally friendly method to obtain one of the most constituent of polymeric materials – styrene. The main advantage of this novel method was the utilization of renewable resources (glucose) as the main reagent in the synthesis. The key role in this process belongs to a bacterial enzyme UbiD and its fungal derivative Fdc1 – in the presence of a cofactor in a form of prenylated flavine (prFMN), they catalyze a reversible decarboxylation of aromatic compounds, making it possible to obtain a monomer accordingly to green chemistry rules. Interestingly, so far performed investigations indicate that this reaction is the first known enzymatic reaction that undergoes according to 1,3 – dipolar cycloaddition mechanism, greatly broadening the knowledge regarding the catalysis in nature. The goal of this project is obtaining a detailed, atomic-scale knowledge about two enzymatic reactions: the decarboxylation of aromatic compounds that lead to the formation of styrene or its derivatives and the forming of prFMN, which requires the formation of the bond between flavin and a dimethylallyl moiety in the presence of UbiX enzyme. Computational chemistry tools will be employed to shed light on those processes.

Team:

PI: Szymon Żaczek

Supervisor: Agnieszka Dybala-Defratyka

Publications:

S. Żaczek, J. Kowalska, A. Dybala-Defratyka, Ligand-Driven Conformational Dynamics Influences Selectvity of UbiX, ChemBioChem, 19 (2018) 2403, DOI: 10.1002/cbic.201800389