Human gut microbes cleave toxic carbon–fluorine bond

Human manufactured toxic fluorinated byproducts entering the gut system are not known to be broken down.

Using whole-protein alanine scanning mutagenesis and machine learning the researchers in this study uncovered molecular features critical for defluorination enzymatic activity in human gut microbes.

The authors identified diverse human gut microbial classes including Clostridia, Bacilli, and Coriobacteriia with flexible C-terminal loop residues involved in the defluorination activities.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2504122122

https://sciencemission.com/carbon%E2%80%93fluorine-bond-cleavage