Glucose oxidase (GOx) holds considerable advantages for various applications. Nevertheless, the thermal instability of the enzyme remains a grand challenge, impeding the success in applications outside the well-controlled laboratories, particularly in practical bioelectronics. Many strategies to modify GOx to achieve better thermal stability have been proposed. However, modification of this enzyme by adding extra disulfide bonds is yet to be explored. This work describes the in silico bioengineering of GOx from Aspergillus niger by judiciously analyzing characteristics of disulfide bonds found in the Top8000 protein database, then scanning for amino acid residue pairs that are suitable to be replaced with cysteines in order to establish disulfide bonds. Next, we predicted and assessed the mutant GOx models in terms of disulfide bond quality (bond length and α angles), functional impact by means of residue conservation, and structural impact as indicated by Gibbs free energy. We found eight putative residue pairs that can be engineered to form disulfide bonds. Five of these are located in less conserved regions and, therefore, are unlikely to have a deleterious impact on functionality. Finally, two mutations, Pro149Cys and His158Cys, showed potential for stabilizing the protein structure as confirmed by a structure-based stability analysis tool. The findings in this study highlight the opportunity of using disulfide bond modification as a new alternative technique to enhance the thermal stability of GOx.
Keywords: Aspergillus niger; disulfide bond; glucose; glucose oxidase; in silico study; mutagenesis; protein engineering; stability.