Screening and Application of Microbial Esterases for the Enantioselective Synthesis of Chiral Glycerol Derivatives

Glucansucrases from family 70 of glycoside-hydrolases catalyse the synthesis of α-glucans with various types of osidic linkages from sucrose. Among these enzymes, alternansucrase (ASR) and dextransucrase E (DSR-E) catalyse the formation of unusual α-glucans. ASR catalyses the synthesis of linear glucan with α-1,3 and α-1,6 alternating linkages and DSR-E synthesizes a glucan containing α-1,6 linkages in the linear chain and α-1,2 branches. The sequence analysis of these enzymes enabled the identification of structural elements suspected to be involved in the enzyme specificities. Biochemical characterization of ASR and DSR-E variants obtained from gene truncations or site-directed mutagenesis experiments showed that the specificity of these enzymes to form different types of osidic linkage is controlled by two different approaches. For ASR, the double specificity is controlled by only one catalytic domain where important amino acids involved in the enzyme specificity have been identified. In the case of DSR-E, the double specificity is controlled by two different catalytic domains both belonging to family 70, each domain being specific of one type of linkage.