Case No. 137 · the exotic forty · have you seen this molecule?

Nylonase

the enzyme whose food didn’t exist before nylon

File sealed

The detectives are still writing this one up. The poster and the facts are below; the film and the interrogation room open soon.

Booking photographs

Nylonase, front view, against a height chart in nanometers — FRONT

The suspect, from its real atomic coordinates. Drag to turn it. Height chart in nanometers, ruled every 0.5 nm. Mugshot: a lab hybrid of nylonase and its twin, with both key amino acids. A human hair is about 12,000 times wider.

Rap sheet

Answers to: NylB, or 6-aminohexanoate-dimer hydrolase.
Height: 6.9 nm, standing on end.
Weight: 71 zeptograms.
Build: 392 amino acids in a beta-lactamase fold.
Habits: Halves a nylon-6 leftover. Moonlights on esters.
Suspected: A frameshift, said Ohno. Its crystal says an old esterase, retuned.
Associates: A sluggish twin, NylB′, 88% identical. Plasmid-mates NylA, NylC.
Copycats: Another species learned the trick in a lab, fed only nylon leftovers.
Last seen: In a lab-built bacterium eating chemically recycled nylon.

amino acids out of 392 make the difference: give its sluggish twin these two and it works 1,000 times faster.
You’ve never seen one.

CASE FILE: Negoro, S. et al. (2005) X-ray crystallographic analysis of 6-aminohexanoate-dimer hydrolase: molecular basis for the birth of a nylon oligomer-degrading enzyme. J. Biol. Chem. 280, 39644–39652.

The poster on the street

This is the photocopied wanted poster for Nylonase, No. 137 of the exotic forty. They were made for noticeboards around Boston, Cambridge and the rest of the east coast.

Found one? Scan its QR code with your phone. If you're a signed-in player, the sighting goes on your record with +1 XP.

Not a player yet? Join the Epic Quest: the real role-playing game of Molecular Reality, a nanopore lab, with the CEO as gamemaster.