New biochemical compound can break down environmental pollutants
Enzymes with flavin cofactor play an important part in plants, fungi, bacteria and animals: as oxygenases they incorporate oxygen into organic compounds. For instance this allows people to excrete foreign substances more effectively. Until now scientists were agreed that such flavin-dependent oxygenases use flavin C4a-peroxide as oxidizing agent. This is formed by the C4a-atom of the flavin cofactor reacting with atmospheric oxygen (O2), before one of the two oxygen atoms are transferred to the compound. A team headed by Dr. Robin Teufel from the Institute of Biology II at the University of Freiburg has discovered that O2 also reacts to flavin N5-peroxide with the N5-atom of the flavin cofactor. The researchers have published their results in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.