Objective

The most common secondary explosives and propellants contain nitro groups that are produced using chemical nitration reactions. Conventional manufacturing processes for these energetic materials often use hazardous and corrosive substances, such as nitric acid, and produce hazardous waste streams. Highly reactive nitration reactions can also create multiple isomers and by-products that degrade performance of the energetic products. To reduce the environmental impacts of these processes, new strategies are needed to produce energetic chemicals and precursors.

More than 200 natural products containing nitro groups have been identified, establishing clearly that enzymes can catalyze aromatic and aliphatic nitration reactions. They can also synthesize nitramines. Although intact cells produce the compounds, the enzymes that catalyze the reactions are mostly unknown. It is essential to advance the understanding of the biochemistry to provide the efficient, broad-specificity bionitration enzymes that will be required for the biocatalytic synthesis of nitro compounds on process scales.

The objective of this project is to identify and characterize new bionitration enzymes from bacteria that produce nitro compounds with structural similarity to energetic chemicals. These biocatalysts will be parts for future synthetic biology processes to produce nitro groups of energetic materials. A team of biochemical researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Rice University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory will execute this project.