Molecular cloning, overexpression and characterization of thermostable esterase and lipase from thermophilic bacillus sp.

Abstract

The organisms that reside in hot places called thermophiles become very useful tool for biotechnology. The natural consequence of adapting to hot environments for thermophiles is encoding thermostable enzymes which make them a target for scientists.We have aimed to use microorganisms that were previously isolated and characterized as a Bacillus sp. from Balçova Geotermal region in İzmir for their lipase and esterase activity. In order to measure esterase and lipase activity, the strains were incubated in the media that contain the detergent tween 20 and media containing rhodamin-B, respectively. Three strains out of almost 110 bacterial strains have displayed high lipase and esterase activity at the same time. Three different esterase (Est1, Est2, Est3) and two different lipase (Lip1, Lip2) from different environmental samples were cloned directly by PCR amplification using consensus degenerate primers from genomic DNA. The deduced amino acid sequence of the three types of esterase gene exhibited similar amino acid sequence identity with few amino acid differences. However sequenced lipase genes were complicated to explain so that characterization studies have been made for only esterases.For over expression in Escherichia coli, the esterase genes and lipase genes were sub-cloned in pET28a vector with a strong T7 promoter. A one step purification of the recombinant esterases and lipases was achieved using His-Select HF nickel affinity gel.Enzyme assays using variety of p-nitrophenyl (p-NP) esters with different acyl chain lengths (C2-C16) as the substrate have confirmed the esterase activity.All three esterase showed a very high specific activity toward all tested p-NP esters. Optimum pH and temperature, stability in terms of pH and temperature, the effect of several metal ions, inhibitors and detergents on activity were determined for purified Est1, Est2, Est3 separately and compared to each other.