Engineered Sphingomonas sp. KT-1 PahZ1 monomers efficiently degrade poly(aspartic acid).

In recent years, there has been an effort toward creating and utilizing novel biodegradable polymeric materials. As products become available, it is necessary to concurrently search for novel biodegradation catalysts and further investigate the properties of known biodegradation enzymes. Regarding the latter, we recently reported the crystal structure of a dimeric enzyme, Sphingomonas sp.