FIGURE 4.

Biocapture of plant C1 VOCs by methylotrophs of the phyllosphere. Key enzymes in methanol oxidation imply the MxaFI methanol dehydrogenase subunits (Chistoserdova et al., 2009), and a methanol-dehydrogenase-like protein XoxF whose mutation renders the bacteria less competitive than the wild-type Methylobacterium extorquens AM1 during colonization of the phyllosphere of Arabidopsis thaliana (Schmidt et al., 2010). Unlike methanol, chloromethane oxidation by the chloromethane utilization cmu pathway enters the C1 central metabolism as methylene-tetrahydrofolate (CH₂ = H₄F) and not as CH₂O (Vannelli et al., 1999). Bacterial isolates of surface leaves of A. thaliana harbor the cmu genes (Nadalig et al., 2011).