Paper accepted: Three intertwining effects guide the mode of action of chitin deacetylase de- and N-acetylation reactions

Today, the review on chitin deacetylases written by Sandra Lindner, Margareta Hellmann, and Dr. Martin Bonin supported by Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher has been accepted for publication in the highly renowned journal Carbohydrate Polymers. Like any good review should do, this one was a long long time in the making. After her Master project with us in which Sandra worked on using chitin deacetylases in reverse to biotechnologically produce novel chitosans, she teamed up with Martin and Margareta, initially also with Max Linhorst who had been her direct supervisor in the lab, to try and bring together the many insights we had gathered over the past years when working with these amazing enzymes. As an example, we felt that much of what is in the literature concerning the molecular basis of the regio-selectivity of these enzymes is outdated in light of our findings. We had been slightly involved in the development of the subsite capping model  brought forward by the team of Prof. Toni Planas in Barcelona, at the time partner in our joint European project Nano3Bio . We now believe that this model describes only part of what is going on in the substrate binding site of these enzymes. And in the review, we argue that three different effects - the subsite capping effect, the subsite occupation effect, and the subsite preference effect - combine to define the regio-selectivity of chitin deacetylases. Understanding, and possibly manipulating, these is key to the efficient use of the enzymes in the production of next-generation chitosans.