title: Engineering a highly active thermophilic β-glucosidase to enhance its pH stability and saccharification performance.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  β-Glucosidase is an important member of the biomass-degrading enzyme system, and plays vital roles in enzymatic saccharification for biofuels production. Candidates with high activity and great stability over high temperature and varied pHs are always preferred in industrial practice. To achieve cost-effective biomass conversion, exploring natural enzymes, developing high level expression systems and engineering superior mutants are effective approaches commonly used.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A newly identified β-glucosidase of GH3, Bgl3A, from Talaromyces leycettanus JCM12802, was overexpressed in yeast strain Pichia pastoris GS115, yielding a crude enzyme activity of 6000 U/ml in a 3 L fermentation tank. The purified enzyme exhibited outstanding enzymatic properties, including favorable temperature and pH optima (75 °C and pH 4.5), good thermostability (maintaining stable at 60 °C), and high catalytic performance (with a specific activity and catalytic efficiency of 905 U/mg and 9096/s/mM on pNPG, respectively). However, the narrow stability of Bgl3A at pH 4.0-5.0 would limit its industrial applications. Further site-directed mutagenesis indicated the role of excessive O-glycosylation in pH liability. By removing the potential O-glycosylation sites, two mutants showed improved pH stability over a broader pH range (3.0-10.0). Besides, with better stability under pH 5.0 and 50 °C compared with wild type Bgl3A, saccharification efficiency of mutant M1 was improved substantially cooperating with cellulase Celluclast 1.5L. And mutant M1 reached approximately equivalent saccharification performance to commercial β-glucosidase Novozyme 188 with identical β-glucosidase activity, suggesting its great prospect in biofuels production.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In this study, we overexpressed a novel β-glucosidase Bgl3A with high specific activity and high catalytic efficiency in P. pastoris. We further proved the negative effect of excessive O-glycosylation on the pH stability of Bgl3A, and enhanced the pH stability by reducing the O-glycosylation. And the enhanced mutants showed much better application prospect with substantially improved saccharification efficiency on cellulosic materials.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Feed Biotechnology of the Ministry of Agriculture, Feed Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, No. 12 Zhongguancun South Street, Beijing, 100081 People's Republic of China.|College of Animal Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058 People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.affiliation: Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081 People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xinxin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: College of Animal Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058 People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Lichun
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Qian
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Feed Biotechnology of the Ministry of Agriculture, Feed Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, No. 12 Zhongguancun South Street, Beijing, 100081 People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Pengjun
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Feed Biotechnology of the Ministry of Agriculture, Feed Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, No. 12 Zhongguancun South Street, Beijing, 100081 People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yingguo
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Bai
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Feed Biotechnology of the Ministry of Agriculture, Feed Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, No. 12 Zhongguancun South Street, Beijing, 100081 People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Huiying
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Feed Biotechnology of the Ministry of Agriculture, Feed Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, No. 12 Zhongguancun South Street, Beijing, 100081 People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Rui
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Feed Biotechnology of the Ministry of Agriculture, Feed Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, No. 12 Zhongguancun South Street, Beijing, 100081 People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Yao
keywords: O-glycosylation; Pichia pastoris; Saccharification; Talaromyce leycettanus; pH stability; β-Glucosidase