Enzymatic degradation and recycling can reduce the environmental impact of plastics. Despite decades of research, no enzymes for the efficient hydrolysis of polyurethanes have been reported. Whereas the hydrolysis of the ester bonds in polyester-polyurethanes by cutinases is known, the urethane bonds in polyether-polyurethanes have remained inaccessible to biocatalytic hydrolysis. Here we report the discovery of urethanases from a metagenome library constructed from soil that had been exposed to polyurethane waste for many years. We then demonstrate the use of a urethanase in a chemoenzymatic process for polyurethane foam recycling. The urethanase hydrolyses low molecular weight dicarbamates resulting from chemical glycolysis of polyether-polyurethane foam, making this strategy broadly applicable to diverse polyether-polyurethane wastes.
Olive mill wastewater (OMWW) is produced annually during olive oil extraction and contains most of the health-promoting 3-hydroxytyrosol of the olive fruit. To facilitate its recovery, enzymatic transesterification of hydroxytyrosol (HT) was directly performed in an aqueous system in the presence of ethyl acetate, yielding a 3-hydroxytyrosol acetate rich extract. For this, the promiscuous acyltransferase from Pyrobaculum calidifontis VA1 (PestE) was engineered by rational design. The best mutant for the acetylation of hydroxytyrosol PestE_I208A_L209F_N288A was immobilized on EziG2 beads, resulting in hydroxytyrosol conversions between 82 and 89% in one hour, for at least ten reaction cycles in a buffered hydroxytyrosol solution. Due to inhibition by other phenols in OMWW the conversions of hydroxytyrosol from this source were between 51 and 62%. In a preparative scale reaction, 13.8 mg (57%) of 3-hydroxytyrosol acetate was extracted from 60 mL OMWW.
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1027271/v1
Next-generation sequencing doubles genomic databases every 2.5 years. The accumulation of sequence data raises the need to speed up functional analysis. Herein, we present a pipeline integrating bioinformatics and microfluidics and its application for high-throughput mining of novel haloalkane dehalogenases. We employed bioinformatics to identify 2,905 putative dehalogenases and selected 45 representative enzymes, of which 24 were produced in soluble form. Droplet-based microfluidics accelerates subsequent experimental testing up to 20,000 reactions per day while achieving 1,000-fold lower protein consumption. This resulted in doubling the dehalogenation 'toolbox' characterized over three decades, yielding biocatalysts surpassing the efficiency of currently available enzymes. Combining microfluidics with modern global data analysis provided precious mechanistic information related to the high catalytic efficiency of new variants. This pipeline applied to other enzyme families can accelerate the identification of biocatalysts for industrial applications as well as the collection of high-quality data for machine learning.
Certain hydrolases preferentially catalyze acyl transfer over hydrolysis in an aqueous environment. However, molecular and structural reasons for this phenomenon are still unclear. Here we provide evidence that acyltransferase activity in esterases highly correlates with the hydrophobicity of the substrate-binding pocket. A hydrophobicity scoring system developed in this work allows accurate prediction of promiscuous acyltransferase activity solely from the amino acid sequence of the cap domain. This concept was experimentally verified by systematic investigation of several homologous esterases, leading to the discovery of five novel promiscuous acyltransferases. We also developed a simple, yet versatile, colorimetric assay for rapid characterization of novel acyltransferases. This study demonstrates that promiscuous acyltransferase activity is not as rare as previously thought and provides access to a vast number of novel acyltransferases with diverse substrate specificities and potential applications.
Title: Survey of protein engineering strategies Bornscheuer U, Kazlauskas RJ Ref: Curr Protoc Protein Science, Chapter 26:Unit26 7, 2011 : PubMed
Protein engineering is altering the structure of a protein to improve or change its properties. This unit summarizes concepts for protein engineering using rational design, directed evolution, and combinations of them. Different strategies are presented for identifying the best mutagenesis method, how to identify desired variants by screening or selection, and examples for successful applications are given. This should enable researchers to choose the most promising tools to solve their protein engineering challenges.
Ten years of experience with molecular class-specific information systems (MCSIS) such as with the hand-curated G protein-coupled receptor database (GPCRDB) or the semiautomatically generated nuclear receptor database has made clear that a wide variety of questions can be answered when protein-related data from many different origins can be flexibly combined. MCSISes revolve around a multiple sequence alignment (MSA) that includes "all" available sequences from the entire superfamily, and it has been shown at many occasions that the quality of these alignments is the most crucial aspect of the MCSIS approach. We describe here a system called 3DM that can automatically build an entire MCSIS. 3DM bases the MSA on a multiple structure alignment, which implies that the availability of a large number of superfamily members with a known three-dimensional structure is a requirement for 3DM to succeed well. Thirteen MCSISes were constructed and placed on the Internet for examination. These systems have been instrumental in a large series of research projects related to enzyme activity or the understanding and engineering of specificity, protein stability engineering, DNA-diagnostics, drug design, and so forth.
Potentiometric FIA titrations were performed to determine enzyme activities of lipase type B from Candida antarctica, CAL-B. Two substrates, triacetin and tributyrin were hydrolyzed in phosphate buffer solutions, and the concentration change of the base component of the buffer was titrated in a carrier solution containing hydrochloric acid and potassium chloride. The system was calibrated with butyric acid and acetic acid, respectively. FIA titration peaks were evaluated with respect to peak height and peak area. Butyric acid and acetic acid could be titrated in the buffer solution from 3x10(-3) mol L(-1) to 0.1 mol L(-1). The detection limit of enzyme activity was determined to be 0.07 U mL(-1) (15 min reaction time) and the minimum activity was calculated to be 0.035 units corresponding to 35 nmol min(-1). The specific activities of lipase B for the hydrolysis of tributyrin and triacetin were determined as 16+/-2 U mg(-1) and 2+/-0.2 U mg(-1) (per mg commercial lipase preparation), respectively.
Commercial lipase (triacylglycerol lipase, EC 3.1.1.3) of Pseudomonas cepacia (Amano) has been purified to homogeneity by a single chromatography on phenyl Sepharose. The eluted lipase crystallized spontaneously at 4 degrees C in the eluent, containing 58-69% 2-propanol. The yield of the lipase was 87-100% and the specific activity during the hydrolysis of triolein 5800 U/mg protein. This protein has a molecular weight of 34.1 kDa as analyzed by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). Its purity was determined by SDS-PAGE and capillary zone electrophoresis to be > or = 99%. Immobilization on Sepharose increased its stability in organic solvents. This lipase of P. cepacia differs from that of other Pseudomonas strains in respect to substrate specificity and during crystallization. It exhibits a high stability in organic solvents and supercritical carbon dioxide.
