Plant life: using an enzyme (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, September 23, 2015, 20:27 (3130 days ago) @ David Turell

To fix nitrogen from the air, plants have an enzyme in the roots that does this. An unusual enzyme combining sulfur and iron:-http://phys.org/news/2015-09-world-nitrogen-fixation.html-"The process is called nitrogen fixation, and it occurs in microorganisms on the roots of plants. This is how nature makes its own fertilizers to feed plants, which feed us.-"The enzyme responsible for natural nitrogen fixation is called nitrogenase. Yale chemistry professor Patrick Holland and his team designed a new chemical compound with key properties that help to explain nitrogenase. The findings are described in the Sept. 23 online edition of the journal Nature.-"'Nitrogenase reacts with nitrogen at a cluster of iron and sulfur atoms, which is strange because other iron-sulfur compounds typically don't react with nitrogen, either in other enzymes or in the thousands of known iron-sulfur compounds synthesized by chemists," Holland said.
 (my bold)
"Keeping that in mind, Holland and his team designed a new compound with two distinct properties found in nitrogenase: large shielding groups of atoms that prevented undesired reactions, and a weak iron-sulfur bond that could break easily upon the addition of electrons. The design proved successful because the compound binds nitrogen from the atmosphere, just as nitrogenase does."-Comment: Enzymes are necessary in all life, and note that this one has unusual activity. How did Darwin evolution find it?