Xianghua Tang

The Gram-negative strain of Citrobacter freundii, YNLX, has the ability to degrade hyaluronic acid. In this study, we expressed a C. freundii hyaluronic acid lyase, from polysaccharide lyase family 8, in Escherichia coli. The purified recombinant enzyme (rHynACF8) showed a substantially higher cleavage activity of hyaluronic acid than chondroitin sulfate. We found that its optimal pH and temperature are 5.5 and 35 °C, respectively. In addition, the enzyme activity was not notably affected by most metal ions. K_m and k_cat of rHynACF8 towards HA were 1.5 ± 0.01 mg/mL and 30.9 ± 0.5 /s, respectively. rHynACF8 is an endo-acting enzyme. Its cleavage products had dramatically increased antioxidant activity than hyaluronic acid in vitro (p < 0.001). As the molecular weight of hyaluronic acid decreased, the intramolecular interactions among antioxidant functional groups were removed; in the process of the cracking reaction, new double bonds formed and conjugated with the carbonyl group. We presumed that the structural change is the critical factor influencing antioxidant capacity. Overall, we found that rHynACF8 from Gram-negative bacteria with metal ion resistance, indicated the relationship between the function and structure of its antioxidant cleavage product.

Xylanases have been applied in many industrial fields. To improve the activity and thermostability of the xylanase CDBFV from Neocallimastix patriciarum (GenBank accession no. KP691331), submodule C2 from hyperthermophilic CBM9_1-2 was inserted into the N- and/or C-terminal regions of the CDBFV protein (producing C2-CDBFV, CDBFV-C2, and C2-CDBFV-C2) by genetic engineering. CDBFV and the hybrid proteins were successfully expressed in Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3). Enzymatic property analysis indicates that the C2 submodule had a significant effect on enhancing the thermostability of the CDBFV. At the optimal temperature (60.0 °C), the half-lives of the three chimeras C2-CDBFV, CDBFV-C2, and C2-CDBFV-C2 are 1.5 times (37.5 min), 4.9 times (122.2 min), and 3.8 times (93.1 min) longer than that of wild-type CDBFV (24.8 min), respectively. More importantly, structural analysis and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation revealed that the improved thermal stability of the chimera CDBFV-C2 was on account of the formation of four relatively stable additional hydrogen bonds (S42-S462, T59-E277, S41-K463, and S44-G371), which increased the protein structure’s stability. The thermostability characteristics of CDBFV-C2 make it a viable enzyme for industrial applications.