Polyhydroxyalkanoates discovery

The class of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) is very versatile, with the largest group being the medium-chain-length (mcl) PHAs which consist of enantiomerically pure (i )-hydroxy fatty acids of between and Cj units. Since the discovery in 1983 of the Witholt group (de Smet et al. 1983) at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, more monomers have been described in the literature (see also Gudrin et al. 2009 and review by Kim et al. 2007). 

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