Engineering GH18 chitinases for the production of sequence-defined chitosan polymers.
C Alsina, A. Aranda-Martínez, E. Sancho-Vaello, X. Biarnés, M. Faijes, A. Planas.
Revista de la Societat Catalana de Química 17, 32-44 (2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.2436/20.2003.01.94
Abstract
Chitinases are glycoside hydrolases (GH) that catalyse the hydrolysis of β(1→4) glycosidic bonds of chitin and chitosan polymers. Some chitinases also have transglycosylase activity, allowing them to introduce new glycosidic bonds between donor and acceptor sugar molecules with the consequent generation of chitin-oligosaccharides (COS), which may be useful for a range of biological applications. Chitinases are used as a synthetic tool to obtain well-defined COS. We propose here the application of glycosynthase technology on GH18 chitinases. Protein engineering is used to increase the transglycosylation activity while concomitantly decreasing the hydrolysis activity.