• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.7-11
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• 1999

An extracellular chitinase of the selected strong antifungal microorganism, Serratia sp. 3095, was purified by salting out, affinity adsorption, Sepadex G-100 gel fitration, Sepadex G-75 gel fitration and DEAE Sepadex A-50 chromatography. The molecular weight of the purified chitinase was estimated to be 62,000 dalton by SDS-PAGE. Optimal pH and temperature of the chitinase were pH 7.5 and 45, respectively. The enzyme retained more than 80% of the activity between pH 5.5 and pH 10.5, and below $50^{\circ}C$ but was unstable above $60^{\circ}C$, below pH 5.0. The activity of the chitinase was inhibited about 60% by $Sn^{2+}$, 40% by $Hg^{2+}$ and $Ag^+$, 70% by AHA, 40% by iodoacetate, 35% by thiourea and p-CMB, but stabilized by SDS. $K_m$ value of the purified chitinase was 3.68 mg/ml for colloidal chitin. The chitinase from Serratia sp. 3095 showed antifungal activity to Fusariurm solani.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.191-196
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• 1999

A multifunctional antagonistic bacterium, producing both antifungal antibiotic and chitinase that could be used as biocontrol agents against fungal plant pathogens was isolated from the plant-disease suppressive soil. The isolate was identified as Promicromonospora sp. KH-28 from various morphological, biochemical and physiological tests. The antifungal antibiotic produced by Promicromonospora sp. KH-28 was soluble in n-butanol, methanol, toluene, n-hexane, ethanol but insoluble in H2O, acetone, chloroform, ethylacetate and ethylether. It inhibited the growth of fungal plant pathogens of Fusarium solani, F. oxysporum, Alternaria mali and Phytophthora capsici. The antagonistic Promicromonospora sp. KH-28 produced optimally the antifungal antibiotic when it was cultivated at pH 7, 3$0^{\circ}C$ for 5 days.

• Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.191-195
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• 1992

In order to elucidate the plant-microorganism relationship, we purified an ethylene-inducible, basic 30 KD endochitinase from bean leaves and studied its antifungal activity by a hyphal extension-inhibition assay. The purified chitinase was effective in the inhibition of hyphal growth of Aspergillus fumigatus, Botrytis cinerea, Fusarium oxysporum, Rhizoctonia solani, while microbial chitinases of Serratia marcescens and Streptomyces griceus, egg white lysozyme and papya protease didn't affect hyphal growth of the fungi. The chitinase degraded the cell walls of Micrococcus lysodeikticus, suggesting the lysozyme activity of the chitinase. We discussed the implication of the bifunctional chitinase/lysozyme activities of the protein with hydrolysis of chitin in the rapidly extending hyphae of the fungi.

• Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.181-187
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• 1999

For the selection of an effective antagonistic biocontrol agent, we have isolated an antagonistic bacterium which produced extracellular chitinase, from a local soil of Kyongju, Korea. The selected strain was identified as Serratia proteamaculans 3095. The chitinase produced from Serratia sp. 3095 showed antifungal activity which can attack the hypha surface of Fusarium oxysporum and F. solani. The carbon and nitrogen sources for chitinase production were 0.15% colloidal chitin and 0.1% ammonium sulfate, respectively. Glucose in the chitinase production medium might inhibit the production of chitinase by feed back repression. The antagonistic Serratia sp. 3095 also showed a powerful biocontrol activity against F. oxysporum through in vitro test and in vivo pot test.

• BMB Reports
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.185-189
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• 2003

Chitinase (EC 3.2.1.14) was isolated from the culture filtrate of Streptomyces sp. M-20 and purified by ammonium sulfate precipitation, DEAE-cellulose ion-exchange chromatography, and Sephadex G-100 gel filtration. No exochitinase activity was found in the culture filtrate. The molecular mass of the purified chitinase was 20 kDa, estimated by a sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, and was confirmed by activity staining with Calcofluor White M2R. Chitinase was optimally active at pH of 5.0 and at $30^{\circ}C$. The enzyme was stable from pH 4 to 8, and up to $40^{\circ}C$. Among the metals and inhibitors that were tested, the $Hg^+$, $Hg^{2+}$, and p-chloromercuribenzoic acid completely inhibited the enzyme activity. The chitinase activity was high on colloidal chitin, chitotriose, and chitooligosaccharide. The purified chitinase showed antifungal activity against Botrytis cinerea, and lysozyme activity against the cell wall of Botrytis cinerea.

• KSBB Journal
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.131-138
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• 2014

In this study, we isolated two novel chitinase producing bacterial strains from yellow loess samples collected from Jullanamdo province. The chitinase producing bacteria were isolated based on the zone size of clearance in the chitin agar plates. Both of them were gram positive, rod ($2{\sim}3{\times}0.3{\sim}0.4{\mu}m$), spore-forming, and motility positive. They were facultative anaerobic, catalase positive and hydrolyzed starch, gelatin, and casein. From the 16s rRNA gene sequence analysis, the isolates were labeled as Bacillus licheniformis KYLS-CU01 and B. licheniformis KYLS-CU02. The isolates showed higher extracellular chitinase activities than B. licheniformis ATCC 14580 as a control. The optimum temperature and pH for chitinase production were $40^{\circ}C$ and pH 7.0, respectively. Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was used to optimize the culture medium for efficient production of the chitinase. Under this optimal condition, 1.5 times higher chitinase activity of B. licheniformis KYLS-CU02 was obtained. Extracellular chitinases of the two isolates were purified through ammonium sulfate precipitation and anion-exchange DEAE-cellulose column chromatography. The specific activities of purified chitinase from B. licheniformis KYLS-CU01 and B. licheniformis KYLS-CU02 were 7.65 and 5.21 U/mg protein, respectively. The molecular weights of the two purified chitinases were 59 kDa. Further, the purified chitinase of B. licheniformis KYLS-CU01 showed high antifungal activity against Fusarium sp.. In conclusion, these two bacterial isolates can be used as a biopesticide to control pathogenic fungi.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.437-441
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• 1990

For the genetic development of more powerful antagonistic Pseudomom - YPL-1 as a biocontxol agent against soilborne plant pathogenic Fuaarium solani causing root rot of many important crops, mutants improving the productivity of chitinase were obtained by mutation with UV radiation or NTG treatment, P. stutzeri YPL-M26 (UV mutant) and P. stutzeri YPL-MI78 (NTG mutant) could improve the productivity of chitinase by 2.5 and 2.0 times, and its antifungal activity by 1.7 and 1.5 times, respectively. The antifungal mechanism of P. stutzeri YPL-M26 was caused by lysis of the fungal cell wall by hydrolytic enzymes such as chitinase. The antifungal activity of crude chitinase of P. stutzeri YPLM26 on the mycelial growth of F. solani was observed to be much higher than that of the original strain. The enzymes produced by P. stutzeri YPL-M26 were the same as the original strain in enzymatic properties such as optimal pH and temperature.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.1169-1175
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• 2009

An antifungal chitinase, ChiCW, produced by Bacillus cereus 28-9 is effective against conidial germination of Botrytis elliptica, the causal agent of lily leaf blight. ChiCW as a modular enzyme consists of a signal peptide, a catalytic domain, a fibronectin type-III-like domain, and a chitin-binding domain. When two C-terminal domains of ChiCW were truncated, $ChiCW{\Delta}FC$ (lacking the chitin-binding domain and fibronectin type III-like domain) lost its antifungal activity. Since $ChiCW{\Delta}C$ (lacking the chitin-binding domain) could not be expressed in Escherichia coli as $ChiCW{\Delta}FC$ did, a different strategy based on protein engineering technology was designed to investigate the involvement of the chitin-binding domain of ChiCW ($ChBD_{ChiCW}$) in antifungal activity in this study. Because ChiA1 of Bacillus circulans WL-12 is a modular enzyme with a higher hydrolytic activity than ChiCW but not inhibitory to conidial germination of Bo. elliptica and the similar domain composition of ChiA1 and ChiCW, the C-terminal truncated derivatives of ChiA1 were generated and used to construct chimeric chitinases with $ChBD_{ChiCW}$. When the chitin-binding domain of ChiA1 was replaced with $ChBD_{ChiCW}$, the chimeric chitinase named ChiAAAW exhibited both high enzyme activity and antifungal activity. The results indicate that $ChBD_{ChiCW}$ may play an important role in the antifungal activity of ChiCW.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.81-88
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• 1990

For the selection of powerful antagonistic bacterium for biological control of soilborne Fusarium solani causing root rot of many important crops, the best YPL-1 strain was selected among 300 strains of bacteria isolated from rhizosphere in ginseng root rot-suppressive soil. The strain was identified to be a species to Pseudomonas stutzeri. With in vitro fungal inhibition tests, antagonistic substance of P. stutzeri YPL-1 against F. solani was presumed to be heat unstable, macromolecular substances such as protein. Also, it was shown that antifungal activity of P. stutzeri YPL-1 increased in proportion to its chitinase production. P. stutzeri YPL-M122 (chi-, lam -) which was deprived of the productivity of chitinase and laminarinase by NTG mutagenesis had lost antifungal activity, completely. And P. stutzeri YPL-MI53 (chi-) had only 4.1% of its antifungal activity. P. stutzeri YPL-1 was not able to produce any extracellular siderophore in iron-deficent minimal medium. It is confident that the antifungal mechanism of P. stutzeri YPL-1 for biocontrol of F. solani depends on lysis rather than antibiosis :the mechanism of lysis appears to involve enzymatic degradation of the cell will components of F. solani by hydrolytic enzymes of more chitinase and less laminarinase.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.349-353
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• 1999

Antagonistic Promicromonospora sp. KH-28 isolated from a suppressive soil could produced a chitinase and a antifungal antibiotic for the biocontrol ability. The chitinase and the antibiotic appeared to inhibit plant pathogens of Fusarium oxysporum. Phytophthora capsici, Alternaria kiki, fusarium solani, Stemphylium sp., and Psudomonas fluorescens. the antibiotic produced from the strain was identified as a antifungal substance of 503 dalton having a pyrimidine skeleton with an aliphatic side chain. The Promicromonospora sp. KH-28 was able to suppress effectively F. oxysporum derived-fusarium wilt of red-pepper plant in the pot in vivo test.