Is engineering O2-tolerant hydrogenases just a matter of reproducing the active sites of the naturally occurring O2-resistant enzymes?

Reproducing the naturally occurring O2-tolerant hydrogenases is a potential strategy to make the oxygen sensitive enzymes, produced by organisms of biotechnological interest, more resistant. The search for resistance “hotspots” that could be transposed into sensitive hydrogenases is underway. Here, we replaced two residues (Y77 and V78) of the oxygen sensitive [NiFe] hydrogenase from Desulfovibrio fructosovorans with Gly and with Cys, respectively, to copy the active site pocket of the resistant membrane-bound [NiFe] enzyme from Ralstonia eutropha and we examined how this affected oxygen sensitivity. The results are discussed in the light of a short review of the recent results dealing with the reactivity of hydrogenases towards oxygen.