title: Isolation and characterization of marine bacterial strain degrading fucoidan from Korean Undaria pinnatifida Sporophylls.
abstract: In spite of an increasing interest in fucoidans as biologically active compounds, no convenient commercial sources with fucoidanase activity are yet available. A marine bacterial strain that showed confluent growth on a minimal medium containing fucoidan, prepared from Korean Undaria pinnatifida sporophylls, as the sole carbon source was isolated and identified based on a 16S rDNA sequence analysis as a strain of Sphingomonas paucimobilis, and named Sphingomonas paucimobilis PF-1. The strain depolymerized fucoidan into more than 7 distinct lowmolecular- mass fucose-containing oligosaccharides, ranging from 305 to 3,749 Da. The enzyme activity was shown to be associated with the whole cell, suggesting the possibility of a surface display of the enzyme. However, a whole-cell enzyme preparation neither released the monomer Lfucose from the fucoidan nor hydrolyzed the chromogenic substrate p-nitrophenyl-alpha-L-fucoside, indicating that the enzyme may be an endo-acting fucoidanase rather than an alpha-L-fucosidase. Therefore, this would appear to be the first report on fucoidanolytic activity by a Sphingomonas species and also the first report on the enzymatic degradation of the Korean Undaria pinnatifida sporophyll fucoidan. Moreover, this enzyme activity may be very useful for structural analyses of fucose-containing polysaccharides and the production of bioactive fucooligosaccharides.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biotechnology and Biomaterial Engineering Research Center, The Catholic University of Korea, Bucheon 420-743, Korea.
authors.forename: Woo-Jung
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Sung-Min
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Yoon-Hee
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Hyun Guell
authors.initials: HG
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Hyung-Kwon
authors.initials: HK
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Seong Hoon
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Moon
authors.forename: Hyun-Hyo
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Suh
authors.forename: Ki-Hyo
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Jang
authors.forename: Yong-Il
authors.initials: YI
authors.lastname: Park
mesh_terms: D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D002457:Cell Extracts / Q000737:chemistry; D004798:Enzymes / Q000378:metabolism; D007723:Korea; D010802:Phylogeny; D011134:Polysaccharides / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*; D012623:Seawater / Q000382:microbiology*; D020578:Sphingomonas / Q000145:classification / Q000166:cytology / Q000302:isolation & purification* / Q000378:metabolism*; D044648:Undaria / Q000378:metabolism / Q000382:microbiology*; D014871:Water Microbiology
chemical_list: D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D002457:Cell Extracts; D004798:Enzymes; D011134:Polysaccharides; C007789:fucoidan