Enzyme produces flavor aldehydes from fatty acids

Researchers at the University of Kentucky have been awarded the US Patent 7,153,680 covering recombinant hydroperoxide lyase from watermelon. A hydroperoxide lyase cleaves a carbon-to-carbon bond in the hydroperoxides of polyunsaturated fatty acids to generate hydroperoxide and omega-oxo-acids. The researchers obtained a nucleic acid sequence encoding the gene for hydroperoxide lyase from watermelon leaf tissue. They inserted the sequence into a vector that they used to transform an Escherichia coli bacterium strain so that it produced the enzyme.