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Biochemistry

Breaking methane

Nature volume 518, pages 309–310 (2015)Cite this article

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The most powerful oxidant found in nature is compound Q, an enzymatic intermediate that oxidizes methane. New spectroscopic data have resolved the long-running controversy about Q's chemical structure. See Letter p.431

Bacteria that consume methane gas (CH4) to produce methanol (CH3OH) using dioxygen (O2) must break two chemical bonds: the bond holding the two oxygen atoms together, and one of the extremely strong carbon–hydrogen (C–H) bonds in methane. Knowing how these bonds are broken is central to the development of biological processes for converting methane into liquid fuels. Such processes offer a possible way of dealing with the methane that is wastefully burned or leaked to the atmosphere as a result of the worldwide hydraulic fracturing (fracking) boom. On page 431 of this issue, Banerjee et al.1 report the chemical structure of the molecular species that reacts with methane in the active site of one of the enzymes that converts methane to methanol, soluble methane monooxygenase (sMMO).

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Figure 1: The structure of Q.

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  1. Amy C. Rosenzweig is in the Departments of Molecular Biosciences and of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA.,

    Amy C. Rosenzweig

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  1. Amy C. Rosenzweig
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Correspondence to Amy C. Rosenzweig.

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Rosenzweig, A. Breaking methane. Nature 518, 309–310 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14199

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