Development of A Spectrometric Enzyme-Coupled Assay for 11-Aminoundecanoic Acid Transaminase and Its Detection in...

11-aminoundecanoic acid is a photochemical degradation product of the synthetic plastic nylon 11. With increasing plastic waste in the environment, understanding the fates of nylon 11 degradation product is important. Previously, a bacterial strain with an ability to metabolically degrade 11-aminoundecanoic acid was isolated, but the enzymes that are involved in the metabolism of 11-aminoundecanoic acid has yet to be determined. In this work, we developed an enzyme-coupled assay to study transaminase activity with 11-aminoundecanoic acid and pyruvate as co-substrates. Using this method, transaminase activity was successfully detected in the cell lysate of Pseudomonas strain JG-B, grown on 11-aminoundecanoic acid.