Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology (Apr 2023)
Dihydropyrimidinase from Saccharomyces kluyveri can hydrolyse polyamides
Abstract
In Saccharomyces kluyveri, dihydropyrimidinase (DHPaseSK) is involved in the pyrimidine degradation pathway, which includes the reversible ring cleavage between nitrogen 3 and carbon 4 of 5,6-dihydrouracil. In this study, DPHaseSK was successfully cloned and expressed in E. coli BL-21 Gold (DE3) with and without affinity tags. Thereby, the Strep-tag enabled fastest purification and highest specific activity (9.5 ± 0.5 U/mg). The biochemically characterized DHPaseSK_Strep had similar kinetic parameters (Kcat/Km) on 5,6-dihydrouracil (DHU) and para-nitroacetanilide respectively, with 7,229 and 4060 M−1 s−1. The hydrolytic ability of DHPaseSK_Strep to polyamides (PA) was tested on PA consisting of monomers with different chain length (PA-6, PA-6,6, PA-4,6, PA-4,10 and PA-12). According to LC-MS/TOF analysis, DHPaseSK_Strep showed a preference for films containing the shorter chain monomers (e.g., PA-4,6). In contrast, an amidase from Nocardia farcinica (NFpolyA) showed some preference for PA consisting of longer chain monomers. In conclusion, in this work DHPaseSK_Strep was demonstrated to be able to cleave amide bonds in synthetic polymers, which can be an important basis for development of functionalization and recycling processes for polyamide containing materials.
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