Combinatorial alanine substitution of active site residues in a thermostable cytochrome P450BM3 (BM3) variant was used to generate BM3 variants with activity on large substrates. Selective hydroxylation of methoxymethylated monosaccharides, alkaloids, and steroids was thus made possible. This approach could be generally useful for improving the activity of enzymes that show only limited activity on larger substrates.

We describe an efficient SCHEMA recombination-based approach for screening homologous enzymes to identify stabilizing amino acid sequence blocks. This approach has been used to generate active, thermostable cellobiohydrolase class I (CBH I) enzymes from the 390 625 possible chimeras that can be made by swapping eight blocks from five fungal homologs. Constructing and characterizing the parent enzymes and just 32 'monomeras' containing a single block from a homologous enzyme allowed stability contributions to be assigned to 36 of the 40 blocks from which the CBH I chimeras can be assembled. Sixteen of 16 predicted thermostable chimeras, with an average of 37 mutations relative to the closest parent, are more thermostable than the most stable parent CBH I, from the thermophilic fungus Talaromyces emersonii. Whereas none of the parent CBH Is were active >65°C, stable CBH I chimeras hydrolyzed solid cellulose at 70°C. In addition to providing a collection of diverse, thermostable CBH Is that can complement previously described stable CBH II chimeras (Heinzelman et al., Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 2009;106:5610-5615) in formulating application-specific cellulase mixtures, the results show the utility of SCHEMA recombination for screening large swaths of natural enzyme sequence space for desirable amino acid blocks.

Deuterium spin relaxation was used to examine the motion of enzyme-bound water on subtilisin Carlsberg colyophilized with inorganic salts for activation in different organic solvents. Spectral editing was used to ensure that the relaxation times were associated with relatively mobile deuterons, which were contributed almost entirely by D2O rather than hydrogen-deuteron exchange on the protein. The results indicate that the timescale of motion for residual water molecules on the biocatalyst, ( c)D 2 O, in hexane decreased from 65 ns (salt-free) to 0.58 ns (98% CsF) as (kcat͞KM)app of the biocatalyst preparation increased from 0.092 s ؊1 ⅐M ؊1 (saltfree) to 1,140 s ؊1 ⅐M ؊1 (98% CsF). A similar effect was apparent in acetone; the timescale decreased from 24 ns (salt-free) to 2.87 ns (98% KF), with a corresponding increase in (kcat͞KM)app of 0.140 s ؊1 ⅐M ؊1 (salt-free) to 12.8 s ؊1 ⅐M ؊1 (98% KF). Although a global correlation between water mobility and enzyme activity was not evident, linear correlations between ln[(kcat͞KM)app] and ( c)D 2 O were obtained for salt-activated enzyme preparations in both hexane and acetone. Furthermore, a direct correlation was evident between (kcat͞KM)app and the total amount of mobile water per mass of enzyme. These results suggest that increases in enzymebound water mobility mediated by the presence of salt act as a molecular lubricant and enhance enzyme flexibility in a manner functionally similar to temperature. Greater flexibility may permit a larger degree of local transition-state mobility, reflected by a more positive entropy of activation, for the salt-activated enzyme compared with the salt-free enzyme. This increased mobility may contribute to the dramatic increases in biocatalyst activity.enzyme activation ͉ organic solvents ͉ salts ͉ subtilisin Carlsberg I n recent years, the application of selective, nonhazardous biocatalysts for chemical synthesis has become an increasingly attractive alternative to traditional chemical methods. This trend is driven in part by the exquisite chemo-, regio-, and enantioselectivities commonly demonstrated by enzymes. The high demand for enantiomerically pure and selectively functionalized molecules, especially within the pharmaceutical industry, continues to spur the expanding interest in biocatalysis. Unfortunately, many compounds of interest to the pharmaceutical and related industries exhibit poor solubility and undergo deleterious side reactions (e.g., hydrolysis) in water; hence, they are not amenable to enzymatic reactions in conventional media.Nonaqueous biocatalysis, including enzymatic reactions in nearly anhydrous organic solvents, has emerged as an alternative approach to circumvent the limitations of aqueous-based reaction systems. There are drawbacks, however, to performing enzymatic reactions in organic solvents, most notably low biocatalytic activity (1-5). Much effort has been directed toward elucidating the mechanism(s) underlying the low activity exhibited by insoluble enzyme formulations in organic solvents. Poor com...

Building on our previous efforts to generate thermostable chimeric fungal cellobiohydrolase I (CBH I, also known as Cel7A) cellulases by structure-guided recombination, we used FoldX and a 'consensus' sequence approach to identify individual mutations present in the five homologous parent CBH I enzymes which further stabilize the chimeras. Using the FoldX force field, we calculated the effect on ΔG(Folding) of each candidate mutation in a number of CBH I structures and chose those predicted to be stabilizing in multiple structures. With an alignment of 41 CBH I sequences, we also used amino acid frequencies at each candidate position to calculate predicted effects on ΔG(Folding). A combination of mutations chosen using these methods increased the T(50) of the most thermostable chimera by an additional 4.7°C, to yield a CBH I with T(50) of 72.1°C, which is 9.2°C higher than that of the most stable native CBH I, from Talaromyces emersonii. This increased stability resulted in a 10°C increase in the optimal temperature for activity, to 65°C, and a 50% increase in total sugar production from crystalline cellulose at the optimal temperature, compared with native T.emersonii CBH I.