Metagenomic mining and structure-function studies of a hyper-thermostable cellobiohydrolase from hot spring sediment.

Enzymatic breakdown is an attractive cellulose utilisation method with a low environmental load. Its high temperature operation could promote saccharification and lower contamination risk. Here we report a hyper-thermostable cellobiohydrolase (CBH), named HmCel6A and its variant HmCel6A-3SNP that were isolated metagenomically from hot spring sediments and expressed in Escherichia coli. They are classified into glycoside hydrolases family 6 (GH6). HmCel6A-3SNP had three amino acid replacements to HmCel6A (P88S/L230F/F414S) and the optimum temperature at 95 °C, while HmCel6A did it at 75 °C. Crystal structure showed conserved features among GH6, a (ß/α)8-barrel core and catalytic residues, and resembles TfCel6B, a bacterial CBH II of Thermobifida fusca, that had optimum temperature at 60 °C. From structure-function studies, we discuss unique structural features that allow the enzyme to reach its high thermostability level, such as abundance of hydrophobic and charge-charge interactions, characteristic metal bindings and disulphide bonds. Moreover, structure and surface plasmon resonance analysis with oligosaccharides suggested that the contribution of an additional tryptophan located at the tunnel entrance could aid in substrate recognition and thermostability. These results may help to design efficient enzymes and saccharification methods for cellulose working at high temperatures.

Metabolic pathways involved in cold acclimation identified by integrated analysis of metabolites and transcripts regulated by DREB1A and DREB2A.

DREB1A/CBF3 and DREB2A are transcription factors that specifically interact with a cis-acting dehydration-responsive element (DRE), which is involved in cold- and dehydration-responsive gene expression in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). Overexpression of DREB1A improves stress tolerance to both freezing and dehydration in transgenic plants. In contrast, overexpression of an active form of DREB2A results in significant stress tolerance to dehydration but only slight tolerance to freezing in transgenic plants. The downstream gene products for DREB1A and DREB2A are reported to have similar putative functions, but downstream genes encoding enzymes for carbohydrate metabolism are very different between DREB1A and DREB2A. We demonstrate that under cold and dehydration conditions, the expression of many genes encoding starch-degrading enzymes, sucrose metabolism enzymes, and sugar alcohol synthases changes dynamically; consequently, many kinds of monosaccharides, disaccharides, trisaccharides, and sugar alcohols accumulate in Arabidopsis. We also show that DREB1A overexpression can cause almost the same changes in these metabolic processes and that these changes seem to improve freezing and dehydration stress tolerance in transgenic plants. In contrast, DREB2A overexpression did not increase the level of any of these metabolites in transgenic plants. Strong freezing stress tolerance of the transgenic plants overexpressing DREB1A may depend on accumulation of these metabolites.

Characterization of the ABA-regulated global responses to dehydration in Arabidopsis by metabolomics.

Drought is the major environmental threat to agricultural production and distribution worldwide. Adaptation by plants to dehydration stress is a complex biological process that involves global changes in gene expression and metabolite composition. Here, using one type of functional genomics analysis, metabolomics, we characterized the metabolic phenotypes of Arabidopsis wild-type and a knockout mutant of the NCED3 gene (nc3-2) under dehydration stress. NCED3 plays a role in the dehydration-inducible biosynthesis of abscisic acid (ABA), a phytohormone that is important in the dehydration-stress response in higher plants. Metabolite profiling performed using two types of mass spectrometry (MS) systems, gas chromatography/time-of-flight MS (GC/TOF-MS) and capillary electrophoresis MS (CE-MS), revealed that accumulation of amino acids depended on ABA production, but the level of the oligosaccharide raffinose was regulated by ABA independently under dehydration stress. Metabolic network analysis showed that global metabolite-metabolite correlations occurred in dehydration-increased amino acids in wild-type, and strong correlations with raffinose were reconstructed in nc3-2. An integrated metabolome and transcriptome analysis revealed ABA-dependent transcriptional regulation of the biosynthesis of the branched-chain amino acids, saccharopine, proline and polyamine. This metabolomics analysis revealed new molecular mechanisms of dynamic metabolic networks in response to dehydration stress.