Undergraduate Research Project, College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, University of California Riverside, Riverside, California, USA.
Biosciences Division, University of California Riverside School of Medicine, Riverside, California, USA.
Proteins. 2022 Feb;90(2):504-511. doi: 10.1002/prot.26245. Epub 2021 Oct 8.
Several plastic degrading enzymes have been described in the literature, most notably PETases that are capable of hydrolyzing polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic. One of them, the PETase from Ideonella sakaiensis, a bacterium isolated from environmental samples within a PET bottle recycling site, was a subject of extensive studies. To test how widespread PETase functionality is in other bacterial communities, we used a cascade of BLAST searches in the JGI metagenomic datasets and showed that close homologs of I. sakaiensis PETase can also be found in other metagenomic environmental samples from both human-affected and relatively pristine sites. To confirm their classification as putative PETases, we verified that the newly identified proteins have the PETase sequence signatures common to known PETases and that phylogenetic analyses group them with the experimentally characterized PETases. Additionally, docking analysis was performed in order to further confirm the functional assignment of the putative environmental PETases.
文献中已经描述了几种能够降解塑料的酶，其中最著名的是能够水解聚对苯二甲酸乙二醇酯（PET）塑料的 PETase。其中一种，即来自于从 PET 瓶回收点的环境样本中分离出的细菌 Ideonella sakaiensis 的 PETase，是广泛研究的对象。为了测试 PETase 功能在其他细菌群落中的广泛程度，我们使用了 JGI 宏基因组数据集的级联 BLAST 搜索，并表明 Ideonella sakaiensis PETase 的密切同源物也可以在来自人类影响和相对原始地点的其他宏基因组环境样本中找到。为了确认它们被分类为潜在的 PETase，我们验证了新鉴定的蛋白质具有已知 PETase 共有的 PETase 序列特征，并且系统发育分析将它们与经过实验表征的 PETase 归为一组。此外，还进行了对接分析，以进一步确认潜在环境 PETase 的功能分配。
