[Ocean Chemical Science and Technology Frontier] University of Science and Technology of China studies a new catalytic system to convert glycerol into sorbose

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In the 25th National "Safety Production Month" in 2026, everyone pays attention to safety and everyone will conduct emergency investigation and rectification of hidden risks -------------------------------------------------- Recently, Professor Xiong Yujie's team at the University of Science and Technology of China constructed a relay catalytic system of photoelectrocatalysis and enzyme catalysis, achieving the efficient conversion of glycerol, an important platform molecule of biomass, into the high-value six-carbon product sorbose. Relevant results were published in Nature Sustainability. 　　Glycerin is an important by-product of biodiesel, which comes from a wide range of sources but has relatively limited added value. Therefore, converting glycerol into higher value long carbon chain compounds has become an important direction to improve the efficiency of biomass resource utilization. However, the traditional oxidation process can only oxidize glycerol into other three-carbon compounds, and is prone to excessive oxidation, leading to the breakage of the three-carbon skeleton and the generation of two-carbon or one-carbon compounds with lower added value. Therefore, how to avoid excessive oxidation of glycerol and achieve its carbon chain growth under mild conditions has become a long-term challenge in this field. Sorbose is an important six-carbon sugar that can be used in food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and other fields. If the biomass platform molecule glycerol can be converted into six-carbon sorbose with high selectivity, it will be of great scientific significance and industrial value. 　　To address this problem, the research team designed a bismuth-doped tungsten oxide photoanode to regulate the photoelectrocatalytic oxidation pathway of glycerol, and further introduced a fructose-6-phosphate aldolase mutant to enable an aldol condensation reaction between glyceraldehyde and dihydroxyacetone to generate the six-carbon product sorbose. Through the relay coupling of photoelectrocatalysis and enzymatic reaction, this system successfully realizes the continuous conversion of glycerol into a single six-carbon product - sorbose. On this basis, they constructed a bias-free solar-driven system that can operate continuously with only light, shows good stability, and can continuously generate products, providing new ideas for the green upgrading of important biomass platform molecules such as glycerol.