Polyurethane (PUR) is a soil and aquatic contaminant throughout the world. Towards bioremediation, in a previous study, a soil bacterium, Pseudomonas sp. AKS31, capable of efficiently degrading PUR was isolated. Polyurethanase (PURase) enzyme is capable of cleaving the ester bond of PUR and is considered as a key regulator of PUR biodegradation. Hence, for a high yield, easy purification, and further characterization, the aim of this study was to clone and overexpress the PURase gene of this isolate. The current study also investigated structural aspects of this enzyme through predictive bioinformatics analyses. In this context, the PURase gene of the isolate was cloned and expressed in E. coli using pET28(a)(+) vector. The obtained recombinant protein was found insoluble. Therefore, first, the protein was made soluble with urea and purified using nickel-NTA beads. The purified enzyme exhibited substantial activities when tested on the LA-PUR plate. Bioinformatics-based analysis of the protein revealed the presence of a lipase serine active site and indicated that this PURase belongs to the Family 1.3 lipase. Hence, the present study shows that active PURase can be produced in large quantities using a prokaryotic expression system and thus, provides an effective strategy for in-vitro PUR-degradation.
Cutinases comprise a family of esterases with broad hydrolytic activity for chain and pendant ester groups. This work aimed to identify and improve an efficient cutinase for cellulose acetate (CA) deacetylation. The development of a mild method for CA fiber surface deacetylation will result in improved surface hydrophilicity and reactivity while, when combined with cellulases, a route to the full recycling of CA to acetate and glucose. In this study, the comparative CA deacetylation activity of four homologous wild-type (wt) fungal cutinases from Aspergillus oryzae (AoC), Thiellavia terrestris (TtC), Fusarium solani (FsC), and Humicola insolens (HiC) was determined by analysis of CA deacetylation kinetics. wt-HiC had the highest catalytic efficiency ( approximately 32 [cm(2) L(-1) ](-1) h(-1) ). Comparison of wt-cutinase catalytic constants revealed that differences in catalytic efficiency are primarily due to corresponding variations in corresponding substrate binding constants. Docking studies with model tetrameric substrates also revealed structural origins for differential substrate binding amongst these cutinases. Comparative docking studies of HiC point mutations led to the identification of two important rationales for engineering cutinases for CA deacetylation: (i) create a tight but not too closed binding groove, (ii) allow for hydrogen bonding in the extended region around the active site. Rationally designed HiC with amino acid substitutions I36S, predicted to hydrogen bond to CA, combined with F70A, predicted to remove steric constraints, showed a two-fold improvement in catalytic efficiency. Continued cutinase optimization guided by a detailed understanding of structure-activity relationships, as demonstrated here, will be an important tool to developing practical cutinases for commercial green chemistry technologies.
        
Title: Strategies for production of butanol and butyl-butyrate through lipase-catalyzed esterification Xin F, Basu A, Yang KL, He J Ref: Bioresour Technol, 202:214, 2016 : PubMed
In this study, a fermentation process for production of butanol and butyl-butyrate by using Clostridium sp. strain BOH3 is developed. This strain is able to produce butyric acid and butanol when it ferments 60 g/L xylose. Meanwhile, it also excreted indigenous lipases (induced by olive oil) which naturally convert butyric acid and butanol into 1.2 g/L of butyl-butyrate. When Bio-OSR was used as both an inducer for lipase and extractant for butyl-butyrate, the butyl-butyrate concentration can reach 6.3 g/L. To further increase the yield, additional lipases and butyric acid are added to the fermentation system. Moreover, kerosene was used as an extractant to remove butyl-butyrate in situ. When all strategies are combined, 22.4 g/L butyl-butyrate can be produced in a fed-batch reactor spiked with 70 g/L xylose and 7.9 g/L butyric acid, which is 4.5-fold of that in a similar system (5 g/L) with hexadecane as the extractant.
        
Title: Exploring different virtual screening strategies for acetylcholinesterase inhibitors Mishra N, Basu A Ref: Biomed Res Int, 2013:236850, 2013 : PubMed
The virtual screening problems associated with acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitors were explored using multiple shape, and structure-based modeling strategies. The employed strategies include molecular docking, similarity search, and pharmacophore modeling. A subset from directory of useful decoys (DUD) related to AChE inhibitors was considered, which consists of 105 known inhibitors and 3732 decoys. Statistical quality of the models was evaluated by enrichment factor (EF) metrics and receiver operating curve (ROC) analysis. The results revealed that electrostatic similarity search protocol using EON (ET_combo) outperformed all other protocols with outstanding enrichment of >95% in top 1% and 2% of the dataset with an AUC of 0.958. Satisfactory performance was also observed for shape-based similarity search protocol using ROCS and PHASE. In contrast, the molecular docking protocol performed poorly with enrichment factors <30% in all cases. The shape- and electrostatic-based similarity search protocol emerged as a plausible solution for virtual screening of AChE inhibitors.
A 2.91-billion base pair (bp) consensus sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome was generated by the whole-genome shotgun sequencing method. The 14.8-billion bp DNA sequence was generated over 9 months from 27,271,853 high-quality sequence reads (5.11-fold coverage of the genome) from both ends of plasmid clones made from the DNA of five individuals. Two assembly strategies-a whole-genome assembly and a regional chromosome assembly-were used, each combining sequence data from Celera and the publicly funded genome effort. The public data were shredded into 550-bp segments to create a 2.9-fold coverage of those genome regions that had been sequenced, without including biases inherent in the cloning and assembly procedure used by the publicly funded group. This brought the effective coverage in the assemblies to eightfold, reducing the number and size of gaps in the final assembly over what would be obtained with 5.11-fold coverage. The two assembly strategies yielded very similar results that largely agree with independent mapping data. The assemblies effectively cover the euchromatic regions of the human chromosomes. More than 90% of the genome is in scaffold assemblies of 100,000 bp or more, and 25% of the genome is in scaffolds of 10 million bp or larger. Analysis of the genome sequence revealed 26,588 protein-encoding transcripts for which there was strong corroborating evidence and an additional approximately 12,000 computationally derived genes with mouse matches or other weak supporting evidence. Although gene-dense clusters are obvious, almost half the genes are dispersed in low G+C sequence separated by large tracts of apparently noncoding sequence. Only 1.1% of the genome is spanned by exons, whereas 24% is in introns, with 75% of the genome being intergenic DNA. Duplications of segmental blocks, ranging in size up to chromosomal lengths, are abundant throughout the genome and reveal a complex evolutionary history. Comparative genomic analysis indicates vertebrate expansions of genes associated with neuronal function, with tissue-specific developmental regulation, and with the hemostasis and immune systems. DNA sequence comparisons between the consensus sequence and publicly funded genome data provided locations of 2.1 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). A random pair of human haploid genomes differed at a rate of 1 bp per 1250 on average, but there was marked heterogeneity in the level of polymorphism across the genome. Less than 1% of all SNPs resulted in variation in proteins, but the task of determining which SNPs have functional consequences remains an open challenge.
The fly Drosophila melanogaster is one of the most intensively studied organisms in biology and serves as a model system for the investigation of many developmental and cellular processes common to higher eukaryotes, including humans. We have determined the nucleotide sequence of nearly all of the approximately 120-megabase euchromatic portion of the Drosophila genome using a whole-genome shotgun sequencing strategy supported by extensive clone-based sequence and a high-quality bacterial artificial chromosome physical map. Efforts are under way to close the remaining gaps; however, the sequence is of sufficient accuracy and contiguity to be declared substantially complete and to support an initial analysis of genome structure and preliminary gene annotation and interpretation. The genome encodes approximately 13,600 genes, somewhat fewer than the smaller Caenorhabditis elegans genome, but with comparable functional diversity.
        
Title: Clinico-biochemical use of serum acetylcholine esterase following treatment with synthetic pyrethroids, cypermethrin and fenvalerate, in cattle and buffalo experimentally infested with Boophilus microplus Ansari MZ, Kumar A, Prasad RL, Basu A, Sahai BN, Sinha AP Ref: Indian J Exp Biol, 28:241, 1990 : PubMed
Following treatment, cypermethrin and fenvalerate, were found to have inhibitory effect on serum acetylcholine esterase (AchE) activity of cattle and buffalo experimentally infested with B. microplus. The pattern of AchE activity in infested-pyrethroid-treated group was found to be significantly different from either healthy or tick-infested control. There was transient increase in the enzyme activity initially, followed by gradual decline and subsequent increase leading to normal level within 7 days of pyrethroid treatment. The enzyme activity was found to be low in buffalo than in cattle and the values remained below normal level up to day 7 in tick-infested group. The reversion of AchE activity to normal level in pyrethroid-treated group indicated that these compounds are prompt and safe ixodicides with least residual effect. The present investigation concludes that estimation of serum AchE might help in the clinico-biochemical diagnosis of tick toxin and pyrethroid toxicity in cattle and buffalo treated with these pyrethroids against tick infestation.