Biocatalysis and biodegradation for efficient utilization of liquid n-alkanes.

Liquid n-alkanes can be fully mineralized into carbon dioxide and water through microbial processes, enabling effective bioremediation of petroleum pollution.

• Why it matters: Petroleum hydrocarbons like n-alkanes are major environmental pollutants, and understanding their microbial transformation is crucial for environmental protection and resource utilization.
• What they did: The review summarizes microbial sorption, transmembrane transport, enzyme-catalyzed hydroxylation, and applications of biodegradation and biocatalysis, focusing on the pathway of n-alkane transformation.
• The result: Insights into these processes and future research directions may help overcome key bottlenecks, advancing environmental cleanup and the biosynthesis of value-added chemicals from n-alkanes.