Abstract
Bioremediation of pollutants is a major concern worldwide, leading to the research of new processes to break down and recycle xenobiotics and environment contaminating polymers. Among them, carbamates have a very broad spectrum of uses, such as toxinogenic pesticides or elastomers. In this study, we mined the bovine rumen microbiome for carbamate degrading enzymes. We isolated 26 hit clones exhibiting esterase activity, and were able to degrade at least one of the targeted polyurethane and pesticide carbamate compounds. The most active clone was deeply characterized. In addition to Impranil, this clone was active on Tween 20, pNP-acetate, butyrate and palmitate, and on the insecticide fenobucarb. Sequencing and sub-cloning of the best target revealed a novel carboxyl-ester hydrolase belonging to the lipolytic family IV, named CE_Ubrb. This study highlights the potential of highly diverse microbiota such as the ruminal one for the discovery of promiscuous enzymes, whose versatility could be exploited for industrial uses.
MeSH terms
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Animals
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Carbamates / metabolism*
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Cattle
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Metagenomics*
Grants and funding
We confirm that this research was funded by the French Ministry of Education and Research (Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche), the INRA metaprogramme M2E (project Metascreen), and the European Union's framework programme Horizon 2020 (LEITBIO‐2015‐685474, Metafluidics). The French Ministry of Education and Research provided support in the form of salaries for [LU]. INRA provided support in the form of salaries for [SPS], [GPV] and [EL]. The high throughput screening work was carried out at the Laboratory for BioSystems & Process Engineering (Toulouse, France) with the equipment of the ICEO facility, dedicated to the screening and the discovery of original enzymes. ICEO is supported by grants from the Région Midi-Pyrénées, the European Regional Development Fund and the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA). One of the authors, Patrick Robe [PR], is employed by the commercial company LibraGen. LibraGen provided support in the form of salaries for [PR], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of [PR] are articulated in the 'author contributions' section.