Publications by authors named "Chun H Hsieh"

OleT is a cytochrome P450 enzyme that catalyzes the removal of carbon dioxide from variable chain length fatty acids to form 1-alkenes. In this work, we examine the binding and metabolic profile of OleT with shorter chain length (n ≤ 12) fatty acids that can form liquid transportation fuels. Transient kinetics and product analyses confirm that OleT capably activates hydrogen peroxide with shorter substrates to form the high-valent intermediate Compound I and largely performs C-C bond scission.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Increasing levels of energy consumption, dwindling resources, and environmental considerations have served as compelling motivations to explore renewable alternatives to petroleum-based fuels, including enzymatic routes for hydrocarbon synthesis. Phylogenetically diverse species have long been recognized to produce hydrocarbons, but many of the enzymes responsible have been identified within the past decade. The enzymatic conversion of C chain length fatty aldehydes (or acids) to C hydrocarbons, alkanes or alkenes, involves a C-C scission reaction.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The efficient hydrogen peroxide-dependent hydroxylation and epoxidation of hydrocarbons is catalysed by a P450 fatty acid decarboxylase (OleT) active-site variant. The introduction of an acidic functionality in the protein framework circumvents the necessity for a carboxylate that is typically provided by the substrate for efficient H2O2 heterolysis. Spectroscopic and turnover studies show that the mutation eliminates the binding and metabolism of prototypical fatty acid substrates, but permits the oxidation of a broad range of inert hydrocarbon substrates.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

OleT(JE), a cytochrome P450, catalyzes the conversion of fatty acids to terminal alkenes using hydrogen peroxide as a cosubstrate. Analytical studies with an eicosanoic acid substrate show that the enzyme predominantly generates nonadecene and that carbon dioxide is the one carbon coproduct of the reaction. The addition of hydrogen peroxide to a deuterated substrate-enzyme (E-S) complex results in the transient formation of an iron(IV) oxo π cation radical (Compound I) intermediate which is spectroscopically indistinguishable from those that perform oxygen insertion chemistries.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Slurries are often used in chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing processes but present challenging online measurement and monitoring problems. In this paper, a novel multivariate kinetic modeling application is described that provides calibration-free estimates of time-resolved profiles of the solid and dissolved fractions of a substance in a model slurry system. The kinetic model of this system achieved data fusion of time-resolved spectroscopic measurements from two different kinds of fiber-optic probes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF