Formaldehyde dismutase

Initiated by a dismutation reaction, yielding formic acid and methanol as products, if the microorganism has a formaldehyde dismutase enzyme... 

R.P. Mason, J.K.M. Sanders, In wVo enzymology A deuterium NMR study of formaldehyde dismutase in Pseudomonas putida F61a and Staphylococcus aureus. Biochemistry 28 (1989) 2160-2168. 

The resistance of certain Pseudomonas putida strains to formaldehyde and formaldehyde-releasing compounds is a case of intrinsic resistance attributable to the presence of the constitutive enzyme formaldehyde dismutase in these microbes (Adroer et al., 1990). The stoichiometric dismutation of formaldehyde to methanol and formic acid, known to chemists as Cannizaro s reaction, occurs under physiological conditions in microbe cells in which formaldehyde dismutase is present. Furthermore, if formaldehyde is supplied, this promotes in the cells the formation of formaldehyde dehydrogenase, an enzyme that catalyses the conversion of formaldehyde to formic acid (Kato et al., 1984). 

As early as 1951, Parravano demonstrated the polymerization of methyl methacrylate using xanthine oxidase (XO)-catalyzed oxidation of formaldehyde to formic acid thereby producing suboxide (02 ) to initiate the polymerization reaction [1], He also suggested direct partially reduced XO to directly initiate the polymerization process with H-abstraction from methyl methacrylate. The latter assumption however was not confirmed by later studies of Derango et al. [28] as suboxide dismutase (catalyzing the disproportionation of suboxide into 02 and H202) efficiently inhibited XO-initiated polymerization of various acrylates (Figure 6.15). 

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