Perspective pubs.acs.org/JACS
Methane-Oxidizing Enzymes: An Upstream Problem in Biological Gas-to-Liquids Conversion Thomas J. Lawton and Amy C. Rosenzweig* Departments of Molecular Biosciences and of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, United States methane,2,3,12,13 it highlights the importance of MMOs in harnessing the biotechnological value of methane. MMOs have been chiefly of interest to bioinorganic chemists since their discovery 66 years ago,5,7,14 but the recent availability of inexpensive natural gas has sparked intense interest from the biotechnology community in these enzymes and the organisms that produce them.15−17 In particular, MMOs have the potential to enable the use of methane as a carbon feedstock for industrial biochemical processes instead of high-cost sugars, which are estimated to be 50% of the cost of production of the final fuel or chemical.17 Preliminary analysis suggests biological gas-to-liquids (Bio-GTL) technology, driven mainly by lower capital expenditures, can be competitive with Fischer−Tropsch GTL on small scales (10 000h 0.2m
