Funneling Aromatics - Nature Catalysis Cover

February 2022 Nature Catalysis cover for the review Critical enzyme reactions in aromatic catabolism for microbial lignin conversion, looking at enzymes that can be utilized for funneling lignin-derived aromatic molecules to a central metabolite.

Here, "funneling" means that many different molecules are fed to an organism at once, and chemically transformed through metabolic pathways until they all converge at one common intermediate molecule. This molecule can then go on to be used as energy for the cell. The process of biological funneling is how a mixed feedstock that contains multiple compounds, like that from a waste processing stream, can be utilized by microorganisms without the step of separating out all of the different chemicals first.