Thermostable enzymes offer potential benefits in the hydrolysis of lignocellulosic substrates; higher specific activity decreasing the amount of enzymes, enhanced stability allowing improved hydrolysis performance and increased flexibility with respect to process configurations, all leading to improvement of the overall economy of the process. New thermostable cellulase mixtures were composed of cloned fungal enzymes for hydrolysis experiments. Three thermostable cellulases, identified as the most promising enzymes in their categories (cellobiohydrolase, endoglucanase and beta-glucosidase), were cloned and produced in Trichoderma reesei and mixed to compose a novel mixture of thermostable cellulases. Thermostable xylanase was added to enzyme preparations used on substrates containing residual hemicellulose. The new optimised thermostable enzyme mixtures were evaluated in high temperature hydrolysis experiments on technical steam pretreated raw materials: spruce and corn stover. The hydrolysis temperature could be increased by about 10-15 degrees C, as compared with present commercial Trichoderma enzymes. The same degree of hydrolysis, about 90% of theoretical, measured as individual sugars, could be obtained with the thermostable enzymes at 60 degrees C as with the commercial enzymes at 45 degrees C. Clearly more efficient hydrolysis per assayed FPU unit or per amount of cellobiohydrolase I protein used was obtained. The maximum FPU activity of the novel enzyme mixture was about 25% higher at the optimum temperature at 65 degrees C, as compared with the highest activity of the commercial reference enzyme at 60 degrees C. The results provide a promising basis to produce and formulate improved enzyme products. These products can have high temperature stability in process conditions in the range of 55-60 degrees C (with present industrial products at 45-50 degrees C) and clearly improved specific activity, essentially decreasing the protein dosage required for an efficient hydrolysis of lignocellulosic substrates. New types of process configurations based on thermostable enzymes are discussed.

The cellulase and hemicellulase genes of the filamentous fungus Trichoderma reesei have been shown to be under carbon catabolite repression mediated by the regulatory gene cre1. In this study, strains were constructed in which the cre1 gene was either completely removed or replaced by a truncated mutant variant, cre1-1, found previously in the Rut-C30 mutant strain with enhanced enzyme production capability. The T. reesei transformants with either deletion or truncation of cre1 had clearly altered colony morphology compared with the parental strains, forming smaller colonies and fewer aerial hyphae and spores. Liquid cultures in a medium with glucose as a carbon source showed that the transformants were derepressed in cellulase and hemicellulase production. Interestingly, they also produced significantly elevated levels of these hydrolytic enzymes in fermentations carried out in a medium inducing the hydrolase genes. This suggests that cre1 acts as a modulator of cellulase and hemicellulase gene expression under both noninducing and inducing conditions. There was no phenotypic difference between the ⌬cre1 and cre1-1 mutant strains in any of the experiments done, indicating that the cre1-1 gene is practically a null allele. The results of this work indicate that cre1 is a valid target gene in strain engineering for improved enzyme production in T. reesei.The filamentous fungus Trichoderma reesei (Hypocrea jecorina) produces large amounts of extracellular enzymes. The majority of the secreted proteins are various plant polymerdegrading enzymes; the most abundant of these enzymes are the cellobiohydrolases and endoglucanases that act synergistically to break down cellulose. This fungus has been used as a production host for various industrial enzymes, including products tailored for textile, feed, food, and pulp and paper applications (6, 10). It has been reported that protein production levels in the industrial T. reesei process exceed 100 g/liter (7).The major cellulase and hemicellulase genes are regulated in a coordinate manner by the carbon source available (2, 9, 14). Cellulose and other plant materials and other substances (for example, lactose) induce the expression of cellulase and hemicellulase genes, while glucose acts as a repressing carbon source. Several genes coding for regulators of cellulase and hemicellulase expression have been isolated. These include CREI mediating carbon catabolite repression, the repressor ACEI, the activator ACEII, the CCAAT binding complex Hap2/3/5 (reviewed in references 2, 17, and 27) and the activator XYRI (29). The CREI protein has sequence similarity with other fungal proteins mediating glucose repression, such as Aspergillus nidulans CREA (8) and Saccharomyces cerevisiae MIG1 and RGR1 (22). In T. reesei, glucose repression has been shown to occur upon binding of CREI to specific sequences in the cbh1 promoter (13). A mutant cre1 gene (cre1-1) encoding a truncated form of CREI has been isolated from the hypercellulolytic T. reesei strain Rut-C30, which is capable of cel...

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Signal peptidases (SPases) remove signal peptides from secretory proteins. The sipS (signal peptidase of subtilis) gene, which encodes an SPase of Bacillus subtilis, was cloned in Escherichia coli and was also found to be active in E.coli. Its overproduction in B.subtilis resulted in increased rates of processing of a hybrid beta‐lactamase precursor. The SipS protein consisted of 184 amino acids (mol. wt 21 kDa). The protein showed sequence similarity with the leader peptidases of E.coli and Salmonella typhimurium, and the mitochondrial inner membrane protease I of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Patterns of conserved amino acids present in these four proteins were also detected in the Sec11 subunit of the SPase complex of S.cerevisiae and the 18 and 21 kDa subunits of the canine SPase complex. Knowledge of the sequence of SipS was essential for the detection of these similarities between prokaryotic and eukaryotic SPases. The data suggest that these proteins, which have analogous functions, belong to one class of enzymes, the type I SPases.

Cellobiohydrolase from Melanocarpus albomyces (Cel7B) is a thermostable, single-module, cellulosedegrading enzyme. It has relatively low catalytic activity under normal temperatures, which allows structural studies of the binding of unmodified substrates to the native enzyme. In this study, we have determined the crystal structure of native Ma Cel7B free and in complex with three different cellooligomers: cellobiose (Glc 2 ), cellotriose (Glc 3 ), and cellotetraose (Glc 4 ), at high resolution (1.6-2.1 Å ). In each case, four molecules were found in the asymmetric unit, which provided 12 different complex structures. The overall fold of the enzyme is characteristic of a glycoside hydrolase family 7 cellobiohydrolase, where the loops extending from the core b-sandwich structure form a long tunnel composed of multiple subsites for the binding of the glycosyl units of a cellulose chain. The catalytic residues at the reducing end of the tunnel are conserved, and the mechanism is expected to be retaining similarly to the other family 7 members. The oligosaccharides in different complex structures occupied different subsite sets, which partly overlapped and ranged from À5 to +2. In four cellotriose and one cellotetraose complex structures, the cello-oligosaccharide also spanned over the cleavage site (À1/+1). There were surprisingly large variations in the amino acid side chain conformations and in the positions of glycosyl units in the different cello-oligomer complexes, particularly at subsites near the catalytic site. However, in each complex structure, all glycosyl residues were in the chair ( 4 C 1 ) conformation. Implications in relation to the complex structures with respect to the reaction mechanism are discussed.Keywords: cellulase; cellobiohydrolase; substrate complex; crystal structure; reaction mechanism; Melanocarpus albomyces; thermophilic Cellulose, the main component of plant cell walls, is the most abundant natural polymer on Earth. It is composed of glucosyl units linked by b-1,4-glycosidic bonds that have alternating orientations, and the repeating structural unit is cellobiose, a disaccharide. The linear cellulose chains form a crystalline polymer through hydrogen bonding and van der Waals forces. In nature, cellulose can exist in ordered, crystalline, and less-ordered, amorphous forms. The complete hydrolysis of cellulose ps034488 Parkkinen et al. ARTICLE RA Reprint requests to: Juha Rouvinen,