A new high-alkaline alginate lyase from a deep-sea bacterium Agarivorans sp.

A high-alkaline, salt-activated alginate lyase is produced by Agarivorans sp. JAM-A1m from a deep-sea sediment off Cape Nomamisaki on Kyushu Island, Japan. Purified to homogeneity, as judged by SDS-PAGE, the enzyme (A1m) had a molecular mass of approximately 31 kDa. The optimal pH was around 10 in glycine–NaOH buffer, and the activity was increased to 1.8 times by adding 0.2 M NaCl. However, when the optimal pH in the presence of 0.2 M NaCl was shifted to pH 9.0, the activity was more than 10 times compared with that at pH 9 in the absence of NaCl. A1m showed the optimal temperature at around 30°C and was stable to incubation between pH 6 and 9. The enzyme degraded favorably mannuronate–guluronate and guluronate-rich fragments in alginate. Shotgun cloning and sequencing of the gene for A1m revealed a 930-bp open reading frame, which encoded a mature enzyme of 289 amino acids (32,295 Da) belonging to polysaccharide lyase family 7. The deduced amino acid sequence showed the highest similarity to that of a Klebsiella enzyme, with only 54% identity.