1,2,3-Trichloropropane (TCP) is a highly toxic and recalcitrant compound. Haloalkane dehalogenases are bacterial enzymes that catalyze the cleavage of a carbon-halogen bond in a wide range of organic halogenated compounds. Haloalkane dehalogenase LinB from Sphingobium japonicum UT26 has, for a long time, been considered inactive with TCP, since the reaction cannot be easily detected by conventional analytical methods. Here we demonstrate detection of the weak activity (k(cat) = 0.005 s(-1)) of LinB with TCP using X-ray crystallography and microcalorimetry. This observation makes LinB a useful starting material for the development of a new biocatalyst toward TCP by protein engineering. Microcalorimetry is proposed to be a universal method for the detection of weak enzymatic activities. Detection of these activities is becoming increasingly important for engineering novel biocatalysts using the scaffolds of proteins with promiscuous activities.
Representative scheme of Haloalkane_dehalogenase-HLD2 structure and an image from PDBsum server
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PDB-Sum
2BFN Previously Class, Architecture, Topology and Homologous superfamily - PDB-Sum server
FSSP
2BFNFold classification based on Structure-Structure alignment of Proteins - FSSP server
