Using a newly developed technique, researchers from Japan, Germany and US have identified a key step in production of hydrogen gas by a bacterial enzyme. Understanding these reactions could be important in developing a clean-fuel economy powered by hydrogen.
The team studied hydrogenases – enzymes that catalyze production of hydrogen from two widely distributed organisms: Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a single-cell algae and Desulfovibrio desulfuricans, a bacterium.
In both cases, their hydrogenase enzymes have an active site with two iron atoms. The study is published online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
“Among hydrogenases, [FeFe] hydrogenase has the highest turnover rate (molecular hydrogen production rate) and therefore has a potential role in the future hydrogen economy, either by a direct use or by a synthetic complex which has a similar reaction center,” said professor Stephen Cramer in the University Of California Davis (UC Davis) department of chemistry and coauthor on the paper along with graduate students Cindy Pham (co-first author) and Nakul Mishra and project scientist Hongxin Wang in the same department.
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