{"id":245680,"date":"2026-10-20T05:04:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T10:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/molecular-pendulum-shuttles-protons-to-enable-rapid-hydrogen-production-in-enzymes"},"modified":"2026-10-20T05:04:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T10:04:08","slug":"molecular-pendulum-shuttles-protons-to-enable-rapid-hydrogen-production-in-enzymes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/molecular-pendulum-shuttles-protons-to-enable-rapid-hydrogen-production-in-enzymes","title":{"rendered":"Molecular pendulum shuttles protons to enable rapid hydrogen production in enzymes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/molecular-pendulum-shuttles-protons-to-enable-rapid-hydrogen-production-in-enzymes2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Nearly all metabolic processes require protons\u2014positively charged hydrogen atoms. Although these are abundant in the cellular fluid, the biocatalysts involved depend on mechanisms for efficiently capturing protons and transporting them to the site where catalysis occurs. Enzymes from microorganisms can produce hydrogen (H\u2082) by combining electrons with protons. These so-called hydrogenases are so efficient that one biocatalyst can capture nearly 10,000 protons per second.<\/p>\n<p>A team of researchers from the Photobiotechnology group at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, has now discovered how they do this. The researchers reported their <a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/jacsat\/article\/doi\/10.1021\/jacs.6c14410\/5453258\/A-Histidine-Mediated-Pendulum-Like-Proton\" target=\"_blank\">findings<\/a> in the <i>Journal of the American Chemical Society<\/i> on Oct. 17, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nearly all metabolic processes require protons\u2014positively charged hydrogen atoms. Although these are abundant in the cellular fluid, the biocatalysts involved depend on mechanisms for efficiently capturing protons and transporting them to the site where catalysis occurs. Enzymes from microorganisms can produce hydrogen (H\u2082) by combining electrons with protons. These so-called hydrogenases are so efficient that [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}