Engineering the specificity of trehalose phosphorylase as a general strategy for the production of glycosyl phosphates

A variant of trehalose phosphorylase was created that displays a modified specificity and can be used for the anomeric phosphorylation of galactose in a two-step process.

Enzymatic Properties and Substrate Specificity of the Trehalose Phosphorylase from Caldanaerobacter subterraneus

ABSTRACTA putative glycoside phosphorylase fromCaldanaerobacter subterraneussubsp.pacificuswas recombinantly expressed inEscherichia coli, after codon optimization and chemical synthesis of the encoding gene. The enzyme was purified by His tag chromatography and was found to be specifically active toward trehalose, with an optimal temperature of 80°C. In addition, no loss of activity could be detected after 1 h of incubation at 65°C, which means that it is the most stable trehalose phosphorylase reported so far. The substrate specificity was investigated in detail by measuring the relative activity on a range of alternative acceptors, applied in the reverse synthetic reaction, and determining the kinetic parameters for the best acceptors. These results were rationalized based on the enzyme-substrate interactions observed in a homology model with a docked ligand. The specificity for the orientation of the acceptor's hydroxyl groups was found to decrease in the following order: C-3 > C-2 > C-4. This results in a particularly high activity on the monosaccharidesd-fucose,d-xylose,l-arabinose, andd-galactose, as well as onl-fucose. However, determination of the kinetic parameters revealed that these acceptors bind less tightly in the active site than the natural acceptord-glucose, resulting in drastically increasedKmvalues. Nevertheless, the enzyme's high thermostability and broad acceptor specificity make it a valuable candidate for industrial disaccharide synthesis.