You are currently viewing the summary.
View Full TextLog in to view the full text
AAAS login provides access to Science for AAAS members, and access to other journals in the Science family to users who have purchased individual subscriptions.
More options
Download and print this article for your personal scholarly, research, and educational use.
Buy a single issue of Science for just $15 USD.
Summary
The acceleration of chemical reactions by visible light offers environmentally friendly routes to chemical synthesis that may be practical and scalable for use in industrial manufacture (1). Although widespread in chemistry, photocatalysis is rare in biology, and the harnessing of photochemistry in biologically based manufacture is challenging. On page 903 of this issue, Sorigué et al. (2) describe an algal photoenzyme that uses blue light to convert fatty acids into hydrocarbons. The photoenzyme uses a riboflavin (vitamin B2) cofactor to drive fatty acid decarboxylation via radical-based catalysis and shows promise as a light-dependent biocatalyst for hydrocarbon production. This and other recent discoveries suggest a hitherto hidden scope for biotechnologically useful photochemistry by means of cofactor-dependent enzymes.
This is an article distributed under the terms of the Science Journals Default License.
