Saks Elzbieta, Jankiewicz Urszula
Katedra Biochemii, Wydział Rolnictwa i Biologii Szkoły Głównej Gospodarstwa Wiejskiego, Warszawa.
Postepy Biochem. 2010;56(4):427-34.
Chitinolytic bacteria play an important role in degradation of chitin, one of the most abundant biopolymers in nature. These microorganisms synthesize specific enzymes, that catalyze hydrolysis of beta-1,4-glycosidic bonds in low-digestible chitin polymers, turning it into low-molecular, easy to digest compounds. During last decades many bacterial chitinolytic enzymes have been studied and characterized, mainly for their potential applications in agriculture, industry and medicine. Several chitinase classifications have been proposed, either on the base of substrate specificity or amino acid sequence similarities. X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy techniques enabled the determination of three dimensional structure of some chitinases, what was helpful in explaining their catalytic mechanism. Development of biotechnology and molecular biology enables a deep research in regulation and cloning of bacterial chitinase genes.
几丁质分解菌在几丁质的降解过程中发挥着重要作用，几丁质是自然界中最丰富的生物聚合物之一。这些微生物合成特定的酶，催化低消化性几丁质聚合物中β-1,4-糖苷键的水解，将其转化为低分子、易消化的化合物。在过去几十年中，许多细菌几丁质分解酶已得到研究和表征，主要是因其在农业、工业和医学方面的潜在应用。基于底物特异性或氨基酸序列相似性，已提出了几种几丁质酶分类方法。X射线晶体学和核磁共振光谱技术能够确定一些几丁质酶的三维结构，这有助于解释它们的催化机制。生物技术和分子生物学的发展使得对细菌几丁质酶基因的调控和克隆进行深入研究成为可能。
