Chemspy chemistry news and views

Remarkable enzyme points the way to reducing nitric acid use in industry - An enzyme in the bacterium that causes potato scab could help create new, environmentally-benign biocatalysts with the potential to cut use of the highly corrosive chemical nitric acid. Chemists at the University of Warwick in the UK, in collaboration with researchers at Cornell University in the USA, have reported in the journal Nature Chemical Biology the discovery of an enzyme in the bacterium Streptomyces scabies that catalyses an aromatic nitration reaction.(10.1038/nchembio.1048)

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