Chlorochemicals create two or three orders of more magnitude chemical activity Compare fluorocortisone with cortisone (1000 times more physiologically active) or even Chloral Hydrate which is rather near trichloroethanol You can pass out with a hundreth or two hundredth the milligram dose

Chlorination as well as halogenation is a well known approach to pharmaceutical creation

Moving this effect from little molecules to giant enzymes is doable like this Bacteria assemble big proteins from amino acids found at their culture medium halogenated amino acids like the well known (fluorouracil) are assembled to create the recurring protein structures the girder like alpha sheets as well as beta helices plus various shape motifs

The idea is that the general enzyme shape fits just a little tighter here or is a little more flexible there at the well researched active site areas of the enzyme

My first use of this is to create food Governments are historically governments; I just read that the 1930s german government made vending food to jews illegal; Hey with efficient ideas like that I know there have been imitators

a 3 cent ounce of powder that turns a few Kg of straw to starch plus sugar is near an order of magnitude of current enzymes activity Haloenzymes give people food absent permission

100 million were advertised as facing famine as a result of the recent oil war With cheap haloenzymes they could have food

Create HaloEnzyme versions of the straw digesting enzymes to cheaply produce starch n sugar from straw Our method is giving halogenated amino acids to the bacteria that create these enzymes now Tighter halogenated alpha sheets n beta helices do the job
-- beanangel, Dec 16 2008

Halogenated biomolecules http://www.ncbi.nlm...gov/pubmed/16121186
A paper about halogens in biochemistry, which I haven't read because it goes over my head by the third sentence of the abstract [Wrongfellow, Dec 17 2008]

Yes, obviously.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 16 2008


Oh for pity. If you can't comply with rules for written English at least employ the conventions of the spoken word. This reads like an epileptic seizure. Also the "make better enzymes with halogens" sounds very similar to "make better enzymes with magic".
-- WcW, Dec 16 2008


"Enzymatic incorporation of chlorine, bromine or iodine atoms occurs during the biosynthesis of more than 4,000 natural products. Halogenation can have significant consequences for the bioactivity of these products..." (link)

So this has probably been baked for billions of years, unless you have an idea for a particular enzyme which could be improved.
-- Wrongfellow, Dec 17 2008


[Wrongfellow] I think that that article refers to enzymes that halogenate/dehalogenate other molecules, rather than to halogenated enzymes.
-- spidermother, Dec 17 2008


[marked-for-deletion] Bullshit.
-- Loris, Dec 17 2008


[Loris], that's not an explicit reason for mfd. You can check the helpfile to see what these are, but something tells me you already knew that.

The idea is to feed halogens to bacteria to enhance activity of their starch converting enzymes. It's really uninspired and simple, compared to some of bean's stuff. The enzymes are presumably extracted and added to a slurry of straw and water where the conversion takes place. My best guess is that your enzymatic extraction is going to be costly enough to debunk the idea, but maybe it doesn't need to be done. At the very least you will have to homogenize your bacteria.

The assumptions involved in this idea are poorly understood and may not be true at least in regard to the desired applications. I can say this about every one of [bean]'s ideas and that is why I don't vote on them. But I think they deserve to stand, some of them.
-- daseva, Dec 17 2008


I think the idea of Halogenating glycine a common simple amino acid then feeding it to bacteria to see how their enzymes are physically restructured would give people the option of crafting bacterial made proteins n peptides with wider shape latitude

A typical enzyme of value has a known active site geometry If that geometric area is unusually rich with a particular amino acid constructor piece then feeding the bacteria halogenated version of that amino acid will change that activity

Both zovirax as well as fluorouracil substiture for normal body amino acids these then create structural changes the drastically affect function I'm just applying this known effect to the grippy or wiggly parts of highly valued enzymes like those used to produce ethanol from switchgrass or edible starch n sugar from straw
-- beanangel, Dec 23 2008


The idea of substituting amino acids is well baked and is used a lot in structural and functional studies.

However I think you are vastly oversimplifying this science. Multiple substitutions can significantly alter the structure and hence the function of enzymes. It's not as simple as saying that more halogens equals increased efficiency. You would probably stop the enzyme working at all. What's wrong with standard enzymes anyway? They're pretty efficient.

I'm also not sure that producing starch from straw is the solution to feeding the world's starving people. Surely it would be easier to just grow grain?
-- hazel, Dec 23 2008



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