Novel Fatty Acid Chain-Shortening by Fungal Peroxygenases Yielding 2C-Shorter Dicarboxylic Acids

Unspecific peroxygenases (UPOs), the extracellular enzymes capable of oxygenating a potpourri of aliphatic and aromatic substrates with a peroxide as co-substrate, come out with a new reaction: carbon-chain shortening during the conversion of fatty acids with the well-known UPOs from Coprinopsis cinerea (rCciUPO) and Cyclocybe (Agrocybe) aegerita (AaeUPO). Although a pathway (C alpha-oxidation) for shortening the hydrocarbon chain of saturated fatty acids has already been reported for the UPO from Marasmius rotula (MroUPO), it turned out that rCciUPO and AaeUPO shorten the chain length of both saturated and unsaturated fatty acids in a different way. Thus, the reaction sequence does not necessarily start at the C alpha-carbon (adjacent to the carboxyl group), as in the case of MroUPO, but proceeds through the subterminal (omega-1 and omega-2) carbons of the chain via several oxygenations. This new type of shortening leads to the formation of a dicarboxylic fatty acid reduced in size by two carbon atoms in the first step, which can subsequently be further shortened, carbon by carbon, by the UPO C alpha-oxidation mechanism.