ReviewThe Biochemical journal2020
The ever-expanding limits of enzyme catalysis and biodegradation: polyaromatic, polychlorinated, polyfluorinated, and polymeric compounds.
Review in The Biochemical journal, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 67 citations in OpenAlex.
- Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Integrated Crop-Livestock Systems: Environmental Exposure and Human Health Risks.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Pooled it
- Kinetic profiles and efficiency disparities in biomethane production mediated by indigenous versus exogenous microbial consortia.Bioprocess and biosystems engineering · 2026Article
- Amidase-Catalyzed Desorption of COAngewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Article
- Probiotic and Microbial Enzymatic Mechanisms for PFAS Detoxification.Probiotics and antimicrobial proteins · 2026Review
- Environmental behavior and human health risks of PFAS: occurrence, toxicity, and the state-of-the-art removal approaches.RSC advances · 2025Review
- Continuous Spectrophotometric Assay for Defluorinase and Dechlorinase Activities With α-Halocarboxylic Acids.Microbial biotechnology · 2025Article
- Enzymatic carbon-fluorine bond cleavage by human gut microbes.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Article
- Enzymatic Degradation of PFAS: Current Status and Ongoing Challenges.ChemSusChem · 2025Review
- A prescription for engineering PFAS biodegradation.The Biochemical journal · 2024Review
- Elucidating the Role of OACS environmental Au · 2024Article
- Toward the development of a molecular toolkit for the microbial remediation of per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2024Review
- Evolutionary obstacles and not C-F bond strength make PFAS persistent.Microbial biotechnology · 2024Article
- Copper Phthalocyanine Improving Nonaqueous Catalysis of Pseudomonas cepacia Lipase for Ester Synthesis.Applied biochemistry and biotechnology · 2024Article
- Accurate prediction by AlphaFold2 for ligand binding in a reductive dehalogenase and implications for PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance) biodegradation.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Wide substrate range for a candidate bioremediation enzyme isolated from Nocardioides sp. strain SG-4 G.FEMS microbiology letters · 2023Article
- A Methylotrophic Bacterium Growing with the Antidiabetic Drug Metformin as Its Sole Carbon, Nitrogen and Energy Source.Microorganisms · 2022Article
- Scientific concepts and methods for moving persistence assessments into the 21st century.Integrated environmental assessment and management · 2022Review
- Review
- Strategies for the Biodegradation of Polyfluorinated Compounds.Microorganisms · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Biodegradation is simply the metabolism of anthropogenic, or otherwise unwanted, chemicals in our environment, typically by microorganisms. The metabolism of compounds commonly found in living things is limited to several thousand metabolites whereas ∼100 million chemical substances have been devised by chemical synthesis, and ∼100 000 are used commercially. Since most of those compounds are not natively found in living things, and some are toxic or carcinogenic, the question arises as to whether there is some organism somewhere with the enzymes that can biodegrade them. Repeatedly, anthropogenic chemicals have been denoted 'non-biodegradable,' only to find they are reactive with one or more enzyme(s). Enzyme reactivity has been organized into categories of functional group transformations. The discovery of new functional group transformations has continually expanded our knowledge of enzymes and biodegradation. This expansion of new-chemical biodegradation is driven by the evolution and spread of newly evolved enzymes. This review describes the biodegradation of widespread commercial chemicals with a focus on four classes: polyaromatic, polychlorinated, polyfluorinated, and polymeric compounds. Polyaromatic hydrocarbons include some of the most carcinogenic compounds known. Polychlorinated compounds include polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and many pesticides of the twentieth century. Polyfluorinated compounds are a major focus of bioremediation efforts today. Polymers are clogging landfills, killing aquatic species in the oceans and increasingly found in our bodies. All of these classes of compounds, each thought at one time to be non-biodegradable, have been shown to react with natural enzymes. The known limits of enzyme catalysis, and hence biodegradation, are continuing to expand.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.