Highly nondegradable chemicals such as PFAS and pesticides can have useful properties in some situations, but are extremely difficult for nature to remove afterwards. Now researchers from Aarhus University have found that certain bacteria use an enzyme that acts as a molecular nutcracker to crush the harmful substances.
All cells contain a large number of enzymes, each of which functions as a small machine that carries out a specific task. Inside E. coli bacteria, researchers have found an enzyme, C-P lyase, that enables the microbe to degrade highly stable chemicals. By rapidly freezing purified samples of the enzyme, the researchers have succeeded in capturing the molecular nutcracker in two different states that represent an open and closed form, respectively. The results show that the bacterium uses the energy from ATP, the cellular energy source, to both open and close the nutcracker.