Search and discovery of new low-temperature active enzymes from Antarctic microorganisms

MARTIN ARAN, LEONARDO PELLIZA1, SEBASTIÁN KLINKE1, JIMENA RINALDI1, GASTÓN PARIS1, CLARA SMAL1, MARIANA GALLO1,5, ANDRÉS BERCOVICH2, WALTER P. MAC CORMACK3, FERNANDO GOLDBAUM1, ADRIÁN TURJANSKI4, DANIEL OSCAR CICERO5

Frauenchiemsee

Congreso; 35th FGMR Discussion Meeting & Joint Conference of the German, Italian and Slovenian Magnetic Resonance Societies; 2013

Cold-adapted organisms and their enzymes offer a large variety of real and potentialapplications in different fields of biotechnology. With the aim of discovering newenzymes with activity at low temperatures we undertook the analysis of proteinsbelonging to Bizionia argentinensis (BA), a newly discovered bacterium [1]. Aparticularly convenient protocol based on NMR experiments [2] was set up in order toidentify the best candidates for structural determination. In this way, more than 30proteins were classified as good candidates for three-dimensional structuredetermination. The hypothesis is that although the amino acidic sequence is notconserved, structural homology will allow the functional classification of the proteinsand the discovery of new enzymes. We have already determined the structure of twoproteins with unknown function belonging to BA: BA42 (by NMR) and C24 (by X-raycrystallography). In this talk, the first insights into the possible biological function ofthe these two newly discovered proteins will be presented.