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Updated: Aug 9, 2026

Light-driven Enzymatic Decarboxylation
Published on: May 22, 2016
Peroxisomal trans-2-enoyl-CoA reductase is involved in phytol degradation
J Gloerich1, J P N Ruiter, D M van den Brink
1Laboratory Genetic Metabolic Diseases (F0-224), Department of Clinical Chemistry, Emma's Children's Hospital, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Abstract:
Phytol is a naturally occurring precursor of phytanic acid. The last step in the conversion of phytol to phytanoyl-CoA is the reduction of phytenoyl-CoA mediated by an, as yet, unidentified enzyme. A candidate for this reaction is a previously described peroxisomal trans-2-enoyl-CoA reductase (TER). To investigate this, human TER was expressed in E. coli as an MBP-fusion protein. The purified recombinant protein was shown to have high reductase activity towards trans-phytenoyl-CoA, but not towards the peroxisomal beta-oxidation intermediates C24:1-CoA and pristenoyl-CoA. In conclusion, our results show that human TER is responsible for the reduction of phytenoyl-CoA to phytanoyl-CoA in peroxisomes.
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