 It is known to act on a variety of both saturated and unsaturated aliphatic aldehydes between 6 and 24 carbons in length, as well as dihydrophytal, a 20-carbon branched chain aldehyde.It requires NAD+ as a co-factor.The encoded enzyme is responsible for conversion of the sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) degradation product hexadecenal to hexadecenoic acid.