Enhancement, control, and tuning of hydrolytic activity and specificity of lipases are major goals for the industry. Thermoalkaliphilic lipases from the I.5 family, with their native advantages such as high thermostability and tolerance to alkaline pHs, are a target for biotechnological applications. Although several strategies have been applied to increase lipases activity, the enhancement through protein engineering without compromising other capabilities is still elusive. Lipases from the I.5 family suffer a unique and delicate double lid restructuration to transition from a closed and inactive state to their open and enzymatically active conformation. In order to increase the activity of the wild type Geobacillus thermocatenulatus lipase 2 (BTL2) we rationally designed, based on its tridimensional structure, a mutant (ccBTL2) capable of forming a disulfide bond to lock the open state. ccBTL2 was generated replacing A191 and F206 to cysteine residues while both wild type C64 and C295 were mutated to serine. A covalently immobilized ccBTL2 showed a 3.5-fold increment in esterase activity with 0.1% Triton X-100 (2336 IU mg-1) and up to 6.0-fold higher with 0.01% CTAB (778 IU mg-1), both in the presence of oxidizing sulfhydryl agents, when compared to BTL2. The remarkable and industrially desired features of BTL2 such as optimal alkaliphilic pH and high thermal stability were not affected. The designed disulfide bond also conferred reversibility to the enhancement, as the increment on activity observed for ccBTL2 was controlled by redox pretreatments. MD simulations suggested that the most stable conformation for ccBTL2 (with the disulfide bond formed) was, as we predicted, similar to the open and active conformation of this lipase.
Keywords: engineered disulfide bond; engineered lipase; interfacial activation; lipases activity enhancement; thermoalkaliphilic lipase.