Production, purification and biochemical characterization of a novel detergent-stable serine alkaline protease from Bacillus safensis strain RH12.

A novel extracellular protease (SAPRH) was hyper-produced (9000 U/mL) from Bacillus safensis RH12, a newly isolated enzyme from a Tunisian offshore oil field. The enzyme was purified to homogeneity, using salt-precipitation, heat-treatment and FPLC anion-exchange chromatography. The purified enzyme was a monomer of molecular mass of ~28 kDa. The NH2-terminal 23 amino-acid sequence of SAPRH showed high homology with those of Bacillus-proteases. SAPRH displayed optimal activity at pH 9 and 60 °C. It was strongly inhibited by phenylmethanesulfonyl fluoride (PMSF) and diiodopropyl fluorophosphates (DFP), indicating that it belongs to the serine-proteases family. Moreover, SAPRH was extremely stable at a broad range of temperature and pH retaining 85% of its activity at 50 °C and 75% at pH 11. The enzyme exhibited excellent stability and compatibility with surfactants and commercial detergents, revealing 90% stability with SDS and 100% stability with Class commercial laundry detergent. One of the most distinctive properties is its catalytic efficiency, which is higher than that of Alcalase 2.5 L, typeDX (commercial enzyme) and SAPB from B. pumilus CBS. Interestingly, the results of the wash performance analysis demonstrated considerably good de-staining at 40 °C for 30 min with low supplementation (500 U/mL). Accordingly, such a protease could be considered as a good detergent-additive in detergent industry.

Gene cloning, expression, molecular modeling and docking study of the protease SAPRH from Bacillus safensis strain RH12.

The sapRH gene, which encodes the serine alkaline protease SAPRH, from Bacillus safensis RH12, was isolated and its DNA sequence was determined. The deduced amino-acid sequence showed strong homology with other Bacillus proteases. The highest sequence identity value (97%) was obtained with SAPB from B. pumilus CBS, with only 9 amino-acids of difference. The region, encoding SAPRH was heterologously expressed in E. coli BL21-AI™ cells using GATEWAY™ pDEST™17 expression-vector. The recombinant (His)6-tag enzyme (His6-rSAPRH) was purified in a single affinity chromatography step and its biochemical properties were determined and compared to those of SAPRH and rSAPB. Interestingly, His6-rSAPRH showed improved thermostability compared to SAPRH and rSAPB. The molecular dynamics of SAPRH compared to SAPB revealed a more thermostable structure, thus confirming the in vitro results showing that His6-rSAPRH has a t1/2 of 120 min against 90 and 30 min for SAPRH and rSAPB, respectively, at 70 °C and different kinetic parameters to synthetic peptides. The docking simulations data allow in getting an insight into the involvement of some key amino-acids in substrate binding and account for the selectivity. Overall, this is the first report of a sapRH gene cloned from B. safensis which can be a promising potential candidate for future applications in detergent formulations.