earticle

영어

Agar is extracted from red seaweeds and it is an important gelifying agent for biochemical use especially in the food industry. The enzymatic breakdown of agar can be performed by two types of agarases. Neoagaro-oligosaccharides produced by β-agarase inhibit the growth of bacteria, slow down the rate of degradation of starch, and are used as low-calorie additives to improve food quality. Therefore the development of the agarolytic complex capable of more effective agar hydrolysis ability is required to bring about a dramatic reduction of production costs. In this study, we expressed recombinant scaffolding protein mini-CbpA from Clostridium cellulovorans. To assemble the agarolytic complex via cohesin-dockerin interaction, we constructed a chimeric agarase cAgaB from Zobellia galactonovorans containing the catalytic domain of AgaB fused with a tandem-aligned dockerin domain of C. cellulovorans EngB. The resulting hydrolysis complex could degrade agar efficiently with synergic effect of agar-degrading enzyme activities. This is the first report on the formation of agarolytic complex using the cohesin-dockerin interaction system. The enhancement of agar-degrading complex activities will lead to the commercial production of useful products from agar biomass at low costs.