{"id":13685,"date":"2014-07-31T17:47:51","date_gmt":"2014-07-31T21:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chemistry\/?p=13685"},"modified":"2015-08-03T12:58:32","modified_gmt":"2015-08-03T16:58:32","slug":"elliott-doe-award-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chemistry\/2014\/07\/31\/elliott-doe-award-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"DOE Funds Bioenergy Study"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Professor<\/a>
Professor Sean Elliott<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Professor Sean Elliott<\/a> and his group have received funding from the Department of Energy’s Office of Science<\/a> for their project, “Tuning directionality for CO2 reduction in the oxo-acid: ferredoxin superfamily.”\u00a0 Their aim\u00a0 is to provide a unique, molecular perspective on how electron transfer processes are coupled to catalytic processes that can either be oxidations that liberate CO2, or reductive reactions that capture CO2.<\/p>\n

Developing catalytic chemistry for bioenergy production requires a detailed understanding of the molecular mechanisms of multi-electron redox processes, particularly those that transform\/capture CO2, producing molecules useful as fuel sources or chemical feed stocks.\u00a0 Understanding the molecular details of how multi electron catalysis can be achieved is a major challenge in modern energy science, particularly in the context of CO2 transformations. While synthetic chemistry addresses the design and implementation of multi-electron transformations through the generation of homogenous or heterogenous catalysts, biological systems, such as plants and microorganisms, use diverse redox-active enzymes to achieve CO2 capture.\u00a0 Such enzymes can be highly powerful catalysts; however, very little is known about their mechanisms of action, let alone how a potential reversible catalyst can be tuned to favor CO2 reduction chemistry.<\/p>\n

The Elliott group<\/a> aims to address this knowledge gap in the context of the enzymatic chemistry of the oxo-acid:ferredoxin oxidoreductase (OFOR) superfamily (see structure above right), which is capable of CO2 reduction.\u00a0 Collaborating with them are\u00a0 metalloprotein crystallographer, Professor Catherine Drennan<\/a> (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Professor Stephen Ragsdale<\/a> (University of Michigan).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Sean Elliott and his group have received funding from the Department of Energy’s Office of Science for their project, “Tuning directionality for CO2 reduction in the oxo-acid: ferredoxin superfamily.”\u00a0 Their aim\u00a0 is to provide a unique, molecular perspective on how electron transfer processes are coupled to catalytic processes that can either be oxidations that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1532,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[114,997,63],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13685"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1532"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13685"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13927,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13685\/revisions\/13927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}