Horizontal gene transfer from Eukarya to Bacteria and domain shuffling: the α-amylase model

-Amylases are present in all kingdoms of the living world. Despite strong conservation of the tertiary structure, only a few amino acids are conserved in interkingdom comparisons. Animal -amylases are characterized by several typical motifs and biochemical properties. A few cases of such -amylases have been previously reported in some eubacterial species. We screened the bacterial genomes available in the sequence databases for new occurrences of animal-like -amylases. Three novel cases were found, which belong to unrelated bacterial phyla: Chloroflexus aurantiacus, Microbulbifer degradans, and Thermobifida fusca. All the animal-like -amylases in Bacteria probably result from repeated horizontal gene transfer from animals. The M. degradans genome also contains bacterial-type and plant-type -amylases in addition to the animal-type one. Thus, this species exhibits -amylases of animal, plant, and bacterial origins. Moreover, the similarities in the extra C-terminal domains (different from both the -amylase domain C and the starch-binding domain), when present, also suggest interkingdom as well as intragenomic shuffling.Received 17 October 2003; accepted 6 November 2003     

产微球茎菌琼胶酶基因的克隆及生物信息学分析

以琼脂为唯一碳源的培养基分离出一株产琼胶酶的海洋菌株AG1,16S rRNA基因序列分析显示,该菌株为产微球茎菌（Microbulbifer sp.）。以菌株AG1的基因组为模板,使用琼胶酶特异性引物进行PCR扩增,将扩增产物克隆至pMD18-T载体后进行测序。结果显示,克隆基因的大小为1302 bp,预测编码含有433个氨基酸残基的蛋白质。对该蛋白质进行生物信息学分析,结果表明,该蛋白质序列与来自耐热微泡菌（Microbulbifer thermotolerans）的琼胶酶氨基酸序列相似性为100%,预测本研究克隆的基因编码琼胶酶。该琼胶酶的理论分子质量大小为48.2 ku,理论等电点为5.42。采用同源建模法建立Microbulbifer sp.AG1琼胶酶的三维结构,富含β-折叠。     

褐藻胶裂解酶发酵工艺优化及其中试放大

对产微球茎菌（Microbulbifer sp.）ALW1发酵产褐藻胶裂解酶5 L罐发酵工艺进行优化,建立褐藻胶裂解酶的高产发酵工艺。结果表明:海藻酸钠质量浓度为1 g/L时效果最好,浓度减半或加倍都会使酶活力下降;25 ℃比20 ℃更利于产酶;pH值控制在7.5时比自然条件下发酵产酶高峰提前,产酶量变化不大;在此基础上,对罐上工艺进行中试放大,20 L发酵罐酶活力最高为57.0 U/mL,200 L罐酶活力最高为43.5 U/mL,500 L罐酶活力最高为38.3 U/mL,分别是小试水平的39.6%、30.2%、26.5%。