 A key accomplishment of the Balskus lab was the elucidation of the enzyme responsible for the already known conversion of choline to trimethylamine, choline trimethylamine-lyase.They identified the gene cluster required for the cleavage of the C-N bond of choline and hypothesized that it coded for a glycyl radical enzyme (GRE), a class of enzymes not previously reported to perform that type of chemistry.Sequence alignments of the gene cluster and previously functionally characterized glycyl radical enzymes as well as homology models of the suspected enzyme revealed the presence of conserved key glycine and cysteine residues in the active site, supporting the hypothesis that the enzyme is a member of the GRE family of enzymes.