• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.363-367
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• 2006

Food wastes were decomposed into the Mugri (Isung Engineering, Korea), a food waste reduction machine, with adding sawdust of cryptomeria. Degradation effects were better when the machine worked at over 45$^{\circ}C$ than those at the lower temperature. Thermophilic bacteria were isolated from cryptomeria sawdust and the food waste products degraded by the machine. The isolates from cryptomeria sawdust were classified into 3 genera (Acinetobacter baumannii, Enterobacter sp. and Erwinia cypripedii) and almost all the isolates from the degraded products were partially identified as Bacillus sp. by 16S rDNA sequence analysis. The isolated thermophilic bacteria showed degradative enzyme activities. In the case of addition of the 30 thermophilic bacteria into the machine, degradation rate of food wastes was almost twice as high with increasing process temperature up to 6$^{\circ}C$.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.22 no.9
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• pp.1279-1287
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• 2012

We established an efficient transformation method for thermophile Geobacillus kaustophilus HTA426 using conjugative transfer from Escherichia coli of host-mimicking plasmids that imitate DNA methylation of strain HTA426 to circumvent its DNA restriction barriers. Two conjugative plasmids, pSTE33T and pUCG18T, capable of shuttling between E. coli and Geobacillus spp., were constructed. The plasmids were first introduced into E. coli BR408, which expressed one inherent DNA methylase gene (dam) and two heterologous methylase genes from strain HTA426 (GK1380-GK1381 and GK0343-GK0344). The plasmids were then directly transferred from E. coli cells to strain HTA426 by conjugative transfer using pUB307 or pRK2013 as a helper plasmid. pUCG18T was introduced very efficiently (transfer efficiency, $10^{-5}-10^{-3}\;recipient^{-1}$). pSTE33T showed lower efficiency ($10^{-7}-10^{-6}\;recipient^{-1}$) but had a high copy number and high segregational stability. Methylase genes in the donor substantially affected the transfer efficiency, demonstrating that the host-mimicking strategy contributes to efficient transformation. The transformation method, along with the two distinguishing plasmids, increases the potential of G. kaustophilus HTA426 as a thermophilic host to be used in various applications and as a model for biological studies of this genus. Our results also demonstrate that conjugative transfer is a promising approach for introducing exogenous DNA into thermophiles.

• BMB Reports
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• v.45 no.12
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• pp.748-753
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• 2012

A sequence of 10 amino acids at the C-terminus region of methylglyoxal synthase from Escherichia coli (EMGS) provides an arginine, which plays a crucial role in forming a salt bridge with a proximal aspartate residue in the neighboring subunit, consequently transferring the allosteric signal between subunits. In order to verify the role of arginine, the gene encoding MGS from a thermophile species, Thermus sp. GH5 (TMGS) lacking this arginine was cloned with an additional 30 bp sequence at the 3'-end and then expressed in form of a fusion TMGS with a 10 residual segment at the C-terminus ($TMGS^+$). The resulting recombinant enzyme showed a significant increase in cooperativity towards phosphate, reflected by a change in the Hill coefficient (nH) from 1.5 to 1.99. Experiments including site directed mutagenesis for Asp-10 in TMGS and $TMGS^+$, two dimentional structural survey, fluorescence and irreversible thermoinactivation were carried out to confirm this pathway.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.27 no.12
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• pp.2190-2198
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• 2017

Thermoactinomyces sp. strain YT06 was isolated from poultry compost and observed to degrade integral chicken feathers completely at $60^{\circ}C$, resulting in the formation of 3.24 mg/ml of free amino acids from 50 ml of culture containing 10 g/l chicken feathers. Strain YT06 could grow and secrete keratinase using feather as the only carbon and nitrogen sources without other supplement, but complementation of 10 g/l sucrose and 4 g/l $NaNO_3$ increased the production of the keratinolytic enzyme. The maximum protease activity obtained was 110 U/ml and for keratinase was 42 U/ml. The keratinase maintained active status over a broad pH (pH 8-11) and temperature ($60-75^{\circ}C$). It was inhibited by serine protease inhibitors and most metal ions; however, it could be stimulated by $Mn^{2+}$ and the surfactant Tween-20. A reductive agent (${\beta}$-mercaptoethanol) was observed to cleave the disulfide bond of keratin and improve the access of the enzyme to the keratinaceous substrate. Zymogram analysis showed that strain YT06 primarily secreted keratinase with a molecular mass of approximately 35 kDa. The active band was assessed by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry and was observed to be completely identical to an alkaline serine protease from Thermoactinomyces sp. Gus2-1. Thermoactinomyces sp. strain YT06 shows great potential as a novel candidate in enzymatic processing of hard-to-degrade proteins into high-value products, such as keratinous wastes.

• BMB Reports
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.480-485
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• 1999

Tyrosine phenol-lyase of thermophilic Symbiobacterium sp. SC-1, which is obligately and symbiotically dependent on thermophilic Bacillus sp. SK-1, was purified and characterized. The enzyme is composed of four identical subunits and contains approximately 1 mol of pyridoxal 5'-phosphate (PLP) per mol subunit as a cofactor. The enzyme showed absorption maxima at 330 and 420 nm, and lost this absorption profile by treatment with phenylhydrazine. The apparent dissociation constsnt, $K'_D$, for PLP was determined with the apoenzyme to be about $1.2\;{\mu}M$. The isoelectric point was 4.9. The optimal temperature and pH for the $\alpha,\beta$-elimination of L-tyrosine were found to be $80^{\circ}C$ and pH 8.0, respectively. The substrate specificity of the enzyme was very broad: L-amino acids including L-tyrosine, 3,4-dihydroxyphenyl-L-alanine (L-DOPA), L-cysteine, L-serine, S-methyl-L-cysteine, $\beta$-chloro-L-alanine, and S-(o-nitrophenyl)-L-cysteine all served as substrates. D-Tyrosine and D-serine were also decomposed into pyruvic acid and ammonia at rates of 7% and 31% relative to their corresponding L-enantiomers, respectively. D-Alanine, which was inert as a substrate in a, $\beta$-elimination, was the only D-amino acid racemized by the enzyme. The $K_m$ values for L-tyrosine, L-DOPA, S-(o-nitrophenyl)-L-cysteine, $\beta$-chloro-L-alanine, and S-methyl-L-cysteine were 0.19, 9.9, 0.36, 12, and 5.5 mM, respectively.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.25 no.7
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• pp.1070-1083
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• 2015

A gene (GT-SM3B) encoding a thermostable secreted oligoendopeptidase (GT-SM3B) was cloned from the thermophile Geobacillus thermoleovorans DSM 15325. GT-SM3B is 1,857 bp in length and encodes a single-domain protein of 618 amino acids with a 23-residue signal peptide having a calculated mass of 67.7 kDa after signal cleavage. The deduced amino acid sequence of GT-SM3B contains a conservative zinc metallopeptidase motif (His⁴⁰⁰-Glu⁴⁰¹-X-XHis⁴⁰⁴). The described oligopeptidase belongs to the M3B subfamily of metallopeptidases and displays the highest amino acid sequence identity (40.3%) to the oligopeptidase PepF_Ba from mesophilic Bacillus amyloliquefaciens 23-7A among the characterized oligopeptidases. Secretory production of GT-SM3B was used, exploiting successful oligopeptidase signal peptide recognition by Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3). The recombinant enzyme was purified from the culture fluid. Homodimerization of GT-SM3B was determined by SDS-PAGE. Both the homodimer and monomer were catalytically active within a pH range of 5.0–8.0, at pH 7.3 and 40℃, showing the K_m, V_max, and k_cat values for carbobenzoxy-Gly-Pro-Gly-Gly-Pro-Ala-OH peptidolysis to be 2.17 ± 0.04 × 10^-6 M, 2.65 ± 0.03 × 10^-3 µM/min, and 5.99 ± 0.07 s^-1, respectively. Peptidase remained stable at a broad pH range of 5.0–8.0. GT-SM3B was thermoactive, demonstrating 84% and 64% of maximum activity at 50℃ and 60℃, respectively. The recombinant oligopeptidase is one of the most thermostable M3B peptidase, retaining 71% residual activity after incubation at 60℃ for 1 h. GT-SM3B was shown to hydrolyze a collagenous peptide mixture derived from various types of collagen, but less preferentially than synthetic hexapeptide. This study is the first report on an extracellular thermostable metallo-oligopeptidase.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.22 no.11
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• pp.1486-1493
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• 2012

In this study, we investigated whether galactooligosaccharide (GOS) can be stably and steadily synthesized using immobilized ${\beta}$-galactosidase (${\beta}$-gal) inclusion body (IB)-containing E. coli cells during long-term repeated-batch operation. To improve the operational stability of this enzyme reactor system, immobilized E. coli cells were crosslinked with glutaraldehyde (GA) after immobilization of the E. coli. When we treated with 2% GA for E. coli crosslinking, GOS production continued to an elapsed time of 576 h, in which seven batch runs were operated consecutively. GOS production ranged from 51.6 to 78.5 g/l ($71.2{\pm}10.5$ g/l, n = 7) during those batch operations. In contrast, when we crosslinked E. coli with 4% GA, GOS production ranged from 31.5 to 64.0 g/l ($52.3{\pm}10.8$, n = 4), and only four consecutive batch runs were operated. Although we did not use an industrial ${\beta}$-gal for GOS production, in which a thermophile is used routinely, this represents the longest operation time for GOS production using E. coli ${\beta}$-gal. Improved stability and durability of the cell immobilization system were achieved using the crosslinking protocol. This strategy could be directly applied to other microbial enzyme reactor systems using cell immobilization to extend the operation time and/or improve the reactor system stability.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.624-631
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• 2007

Thermostable protease is very effective to improve the industrial processes in many fields. Two thermostable extracellular proteases from the culture supernatant of the thermophilic fungus Chaetomium thermophilum were purified to homogeneity by tractional ammonium sulfate precipitation, ion-exchange chromatography on DEAE-Sepharose, and Phenyl-Sepharose hydrophobic interaction chromatography. By SDS-PAGE, the molecular mass of the two purified enzymes was estimated to be 33 kDa and 63 kDa, respectively. The two proteases were found to be inhibited by PMSF, but not by iodoacetamide and EDTA. The 33 kDa protease (PRO33) exhibited maximal activity at pH 10.0 and the 63kDa protease (PRO63) at pH5.0. The optimum temperature for the two proteases was $65^{\circ}C$. The PRO33 had a $K_m$ value of 6.6mM and a $V_{max}$ value of $10.31{\mu}mol/l/min$, and PRO63 l7.6mM and $9.08{\mu}mol/l/min$, with casein as substrate. They were thermostable at $60^{\circ}C$. The protease activity of PRO33 and PRO63 remained at 67.2% and 17.31%, respectively, after incubation at $70^{\circ}C$ for 1h. The thermal stability of the two enzymes was significantly enhanced by $Ca^{2+}$. The residual activity of PRO33 and PRO63 at $70^{\circ}C$ after 60min was approximately 88.59% and 39.2%, respectively, when kept in the buffer containing $Ca^{2+}$. These properties make them applicable for many biotechnological purposes.

• Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.274-283
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• 1988

Aqualysin I is an alkaline serine protease which is secretet into the culture medium by Thermus aquaticus YT-1, an extreme thermophile. Aqualysin I was purified, and its partial amino acid sequence was determined. The gene encoding aqualysin I was cloned into E. coli using synthetic oligodeoxyribonucleotides as hybridization probes. The nucleotide sequence of the cloned DNA was determined. The primary structure of aqualysin I, deduced from the nucleotide sequenc, agreed with the determid amino acid sequences, including the $NH_2-$ and COOH terminal sequence of the tryptides derived from aqualysin I. Aqualysin I comprised 281 amino acid residues and its molecular mass was determined to be 28350. On alignment of the whole amino acid sequence, aqualysin I showed high sequence homology with the subtilisin type serine protease, and 43% identity with proteinase K, 37-30% with subtilisins and 34% with thermitase. Extremely high sequence identity was observed in the regions containing the active-site residues, corresponding to Asp32, His64 and Ser221 of subtilisin BPN'. Aqualysin I contains two disulfide bonds, Cys67-Cys99 and Cys163-Cys194, and these disulfide bonds seem to contribute to the heat stability of the enzyme. The determined positions of the twe disulfide bonds of aqualysin I agreed with those predicted previously on the basis of computer graphics of the crystallographic data for subtilisin BPN'. Therefore, these findings sugests that the three-dimensional structure of aqualysin I is similar to that of subtilisin BPN' Aqualysin I is produced as a lage precursor, which contains $NH_2-$ and COOH- terminal portions besides the mature protease sequence.

• Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.376-381
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• 1995

Thermus caldophilus GK24 was selected as sources of thermostable alkaline phosphatase from a survey of extreme thermophile. T. caldophilus GK24 was tested for production of alkaline phosphatase by addition of various concentration of sodium glutamate, bactotryptone, glucose and yeast extract to basal salts. Sodium glutamate was found to be effective for the alkaline phosphatase induction. The optimal induction medium for production of alkaline phosphatase involves the addition of 0.3% sodium glutamate, 0.2% bactotryptone and 0.5% glucose to basal salts. The activity of the enzyme in optimal induction medium increased nearly 6-fold/ml than basal medium and 27.5-fold/ml than standard medium. T. caldophilus GK24 alkaline phosphatase was found to be inducible. When starved of inorganic phosphate, T. caldophilus GK24 produces the enzyme alkaline phosphatase. The addition of inorganic phosphate to growth medium had a repressive effect on enzyme synthesis.