Oxalyl-CoA decarboxylase: breaking and making C-C bonds

Graduate Students Mini-Symposium

  • Datum: 07.01.2019
  • Uhrzeit: 14:25
  • Vortragende(r): Simon Burgener
  • MPI Marburg, AG Erb
  • Ort: MPI for Terrestrial Microbiology
  • Raum: Lecture hall
  • Gastgeber: IMPRS
  • Kontakt: imprs@mpi-marburg.mpg.de

Oxalyl-Coenzyme A decarboxylase (OXC) from Methylobacterium extorquens catalyzes the thiamine pyrophosphate (ThDP) dependent decarboxylation of oxalyl-CoA, producing formyl-CoA and CO2. The reaction proceeds via a covalent intermediate on the ThDP cofactor. I demonstrated that the intermediate can be “trapped” with a broad range of aldehydes, creating a new C-C bond. Thus, OXC can not only catalyze C-C bond cleavage but also carboligation reactions. Interestingly, OXC can catalyze the carboligation starting from oxalyl-CoA as well as from formyl-CoA. The resulting products are 2-hydroxyacyl-CoA esters, which are very rare in natural metabolism, making them interesting intermediates for orthogonal synthetic metabolism.


Zur Redakteursansicht