Toward a sustainable synthesis of value-added chemicals, the method of CO₂ utilization attracts great interest in chemical process engineering. Biotechnological CO₂ fixation is a promising technology; however, efficient methods that can fix carbon dioxide are still limited. Instead, some parts of microbial decarboxylases allow the introduction of carboxy group into phenolic compounds using bicarbonate ion as a C1 building block. Here, we identified a unique decarboxylase from Arthrobacter sp. K8 that acts on resorcinol derivatives. A high-throughput colorimetric decarboxylase assay facilitated gene cloning of orsellinic acid decarboxylase from genomic DNA library of strain K8. Sequence analysis revealed that the orsellinic acid decarboxylase belonged to amidohydrolase 2 family, but shared low amino acid sequence identity with those of related decarboxylases. Enzymatic characterization unveiled that the decarboxylase introduces a carboxy group in a highly regio-selective manner. We applied the decarboxylase to enzymatic carboxylation of resorcinol derivatives. Using Escherichia coli expressing the decarboxylase gene as a whole cell biocatalyst, orsellinic acid, 2,4-dihydroxybenzoic acid, and 4-methoxysalicylic acid were produced in the presence of saturated bicarbonate. These findings could provide new insights into the production of useful phenolic acids from resorcinol derivatives.

为了实现增值化学品的可持续合成，CO _{2 的}利用方法引起了化学过程工程的极大兴趣。生物技术CO ₂固定是一项很有前途的技术；然而，能够固定二氧化碳的有效方法仍然有限。相反，微生物脱羧酶的某些部分允许使用碳酸氢根离子作为 C1 结构单元将羧基引入酚类化合物中。在这里，我们从节杆菌中鉴定了一种独特的脱羧酶sp. K8 作用于间苯二酚衍生物。高通量比色脱羧酶测定促进了从菌株 K8 的基因组 DNA 文库中克隆 orsellinic 酸脱羧酶的基因。序列分析表明，orsellinic酸脱羧酶属于酰胺水解酶2家族，但与相关脱羧酶的氨基酸序列同一性较低。酶学表征揭示了脱羧酶以高度区域选择性的方式引入了一个羧基。我们将脱羧酶应用于间苯二酚衍生物的酶促羧化。使用大肠杆菌将脱羧酶基因表达为全细胞生物催化剂，在饱和碳酸氢盐存在下产生 orsellinic 酸、2,4-二羟基苯甲酸和 4-甲氧基水杨酸。这些发现可以为从间苯二酚衍生物生产有用的酚酸提供新的见解。