Novel interface-binding chloroperoxidase for interfacial epoxidation of styrene.

A unique interface-binding chloroperoxidase (CPO) was developed and examined for interfacial biocatalysis. Native CPO was conjugated with polystyrene (PS) to form a surfactant-like structure that self assembled at oil-water interfaces. While enantioselectivity of the enzyme was maintained, the interfacial assembly of the enzyme improved its overall catalytic efficiency as compared to that observed with the enzyme contained in the bulk aqueous phase. The PS conjugated CPO (PS-CPO) showed a 2.5-fold enhancement of enzyme productivity versus native CPO under batch reaction conditions for the epoxidation of styrene, whereas a 25-fold improvement was realized in a continuous feeding reaction to reach a productivity of 10 micromol h-1 mg protein-1. The interface-binding enzyme also demonstrated several other advantages such as suppressing unwanted side reactions including the hydrolysis of styrene epoxide products, stabilizing the enzyme by limiting its exposure to both the oxidant H2O2 and epoxide products, and alleviating the deactivating effect of interfacial stress on enzymes by functioning as a surfactant.

A bacterial esterase is homologous with non-haem haloperoxidases and displays brominating activity.

Screening GenBank indicated that an esterase from Pseudomonas fluorescens had high sequence similarity with bacterial non-haem haloperoxides. However, this homology was limited to two distinct domains of the published esterase sequence. As errors in the published sequence were suspected, the esterase gene was sequenced again. The revised sequence displayed between 40 and 50% identical amino acids with the haloperoxidases, but distributed along the whole sequence. In addition to the structural homologies with haloperoxidases, the esterase also displayed functional homology. The recombinant esterase, purified from Escherichia coli cells, was capable of both ester hydrolysis and halogenation, as detected in situ by the formation of bromophenol blue or spectrophotometrically by the bromination of monochlorodimedon. The esterase is thus a bifunctional enzyme. The sequence analysis and the biochemical investigations show that the esterase belongs to the haloperoxidase family. It also possessed, however, a typical feature of serine-hydrolases, namely the consensus motif Gly-X-Ser-X-Gly around the active serine of the catalytic triad. By alignment of the esterase with different serine-hydrolase sequences, it was possible to identify the other two residues of the triad. The triad comprised the residues Ser95, Asp223 and His252. Interestingly, a structurally equivalent catalytic triad was also identified in the sequences of all bacterial non-haem haloperoxidases, in highly conserved domains. The presence of a catalytic triad in haloperoxidases is expected to be important in the mechanism of halogenation.