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NSRRC Deputy Director Chun-Jung Chen’s Research Results in Methanol Dehydrogenase Published in Journal of the American Chemical Society
2021/04/01
NSRRC Deputy Director Chun-Jung Chen’s Research Results in Methanol Dehydrogenase Published in Journal of the American Chemical Society
Chun-Jung Chen, Deputy Director of the NSRRC, conducted a research on the methanol dehydrogenase of Methylococcus capsulatus (Bath) through TPS 05A, TLS 15A1 and TLS 14A1 along with Academician Sunney I. Chen and Dr. Steve S.-F. Yu of the Academia Sinica, and the results have been published in Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Methylococcus capsulatus (Bath), a methanotroph, exists in anoxic or oxygen-deficient environments, including wetlands, soil, swamps, paddy fields, landfills, swine wastewater, and even beneath the glacier of the North and South Poles, and metabolizes methane into methanol and subsequently into formaldehyde and other one-carbon (C1) substances. Methanol dehydrogenase is responsible for transforming methanol to formaldehyde. 

The research team analyzed not only three-dimensional structures of the methanol dehydrogenase of Methylococcus capsulatus (Bath) under various conditions with a resolution up to 1.8 Å using high-intensity synchrotron X-ray, but also the properties of this particular enzyme through several spectrum technologies, such as IR and Raman spectra. The research has discovered the key reaction site containing pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ) with a novel structural enviroment in the methanol dehydrogenase, and originated the first mechanism of PQQ-dependent hydride transfer chemistry of one-carbon molecules in the world.