Eugene Kuatsjah

TL;DR: Although HREs may have been strictly anaerobic and typically methanogenic for much of their history, this may not hold today for coal beds and for the Alberta oil sands, one of the largest remaining oil reservoirs in the world.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that syringate, a common S-type lignin-derived compound, is utilized by KT2440 only in the presence of another energy source or when vanAB was overexpressed, as syringates was found to be O-demethylated to gallate by VanAB, a two-component monooxygenase, and further catabolized via extradiol cleavage.

TL;DR: The indolmycin biosynthetic enzyme Ind4 is an unprecedented O2- and PLP-dependent enzyme that carries out a four-electron oxidation of L-arginine, including oxidation of an unactivated carbon-carbon (C-C) bond, using in vitro reconstitution and kinetic analysis.

TL;DR: The known enzymatic mechanisms for aromatic O-demethylation, decarboxylation and hydroxylation for lignin valorization via biological funnelling are reviewed, highlighting opportunities at the intersection of biochemistry, enzyme engineering and metabolic engineering for applications in the expanding field of microbial lignIn Valorization.

TL;DR: Insight is provided into the bacterial catabolism of lignin and the study of downstream catabolic enzymes are facilitated and LigZ has higher specificity for OH‐DDVA than for protocatechuate (PCA; 6 ± 1 × 102 s−1·m−1).