MpADC, an L-aspartate-α-decarboxylase, from Myzus persicae, that enables production of ß-alanine with high yield by whole-cell enzymatic catalysis.

BACKGROUND: ß-Alanine is a precursor of many important pharmaceutical products and food additives, its market demand is continuously increasing nowadays. Whole-cell catalysis relying on the recombinant expression of key ß-alanine synthesizing enzymes is an important method to produce ß-alanine. Nevertheless, ß-alanine synthesizing enzymes found so far have problems including easy inactivation, low expression or poor catalytic activity, and it remains necessary to develop new enzymes. RESULTS: Herein, we characterized an L-aspartate-α-decarboxylase, MpADC, from an aphid, Myzus persicae. It showed excellent catalytic activity at pH 6.0-7.5 and 37 °C. With the help of chaperone co-expression and N-terminal engineering guided by AlphaFold2 structure prediction, the expression and catalytic ability of MpADC in Escherichia coli were significantly improved. Using 50 g/L of E. coli cells expressing the MpADC-∆39 variant cultured in a 15-L fermenter, 232.36 g/L of ß-alanine was synthesized in 13.5 h, with the average ß-alanine yield of 17.22 g/L/h, which is best known so far. CONCLUSIONS: Our research should facilitate the production of ß-alanine in an environment-friendly manner.

N-acylhomoserine lactonase-based hybrid nanoflowers: a novel and practical strategy to control plant bacterial diseases.

BACKGROUND: The disease caused by plant pathogenic bacteria in the production, transportation, and storage of many crops has brought huge losses to agricultural production. N-acylhomoserine lactonases (AHLases) can quench quorum-sensing (QS) by hydrolyzing acylhomoserine lactones (AHLs), which makes them the promising candidates for controlling infections of QS-dependent pathogenic bacteria. Although many AHLases have been isolated and considered as a potentially effective preventive and therapeutic agents for bacterial diseases, the intrinsically poor ambient stability has seriously restricted its application. RESULTS: Herein, we showed that a spheroid enzyme-based hybrid nanoflower (EHNF), AhlX@Ni3(PO4)2, can be easily synthesized, and it exhibited 10 times AHL (3OC8-HSL) degradation activity than that with free AhlX (a thermostable AHL lactonase). In addition, it showed intriguing stability even at the working concentration, and retained ~ 100% activity after incubation at room temperature (25 °C) for 40 days and approximately 80% activity after incubation at 60 °C for 48 h. Furthermore, it exhibited better organic solvent tolerance and long-term stability in a complicated ecological environment than that of AhlX. To reduce the cost and streamline production processes, CSA@Ni3(PO4)2, which was assembled from the crude supernatants of AhlX and Ni3(PO4)2, was synthesized. Both AhlX@Ni3(PO4)2 and CSA@Ni3(PO4)2 efficiently attenuated pathogenic bacterial infection. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we have developed N-acylhomoserine lactonase-based hybrid nanoflowers as a novel and efficient biocontrol reagent with significant control effect, outstanding environmental adaptability and tolerance. It was expected to overcome the bottlenecks of poor stability and limited environmental tolerance that have existed for over two decades and pioneered the practical application of EHNFs in the field of biological control.