Special Issue "Enzymes from the Sea: Sources, Molecular Biology and Bioprocesses"

Guest Editor
Dr. Antonio Trincone
Istituto di Chimica Biomolecolare, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Pozzuoli, Naples 80078, Italy
Website: http://www.icb.cnr.it/staff/antonio.trincone
E-Mail:
Interests: biocatalysis; marine enzymes; marine glycosidases; marine biotechnology; oligosaccharides

Dear Colleagues,

Marine ecosystem is considered a rather unexplored source of natural bioactive substances with potential therapeutic activity and as consequence it should be also appreciated as a source of enzymes carrying new and surprising catalytic activities to be applied in biocatalysis. Notwithstanding commercial exploitations in marine biotechnology are not familiar as in the whole biotechnology field. The uniqueness of marine biocatalysts could characterize bioprocesses taking advantages by properties such as salt tolerance, hyperthermostability, barophilicity, cold adaptivity, etc. However a marine enzyme may carry more, e.g. novel chemical and stereochemical properties. This chemical biodiversity increases interest in this field: substrate specificity and affinity play somehow leader roles. Both are evolved properties that are linked to the metabolic functions of the enzymes and to ecological asset related to the natural source. Consequently the range of available relevant catalysts is a key issue. Sources are represented by marine microorganism, plants and animals but great efforts are directed towards extremophiles or symbiotic microorganisms and towards molecular biology tools. The advent of PCR, the advances in recombinant expression systems, and the genomic research in general, allowed the access to new natural and modified enzymes useful for biotechnological purposes. As far as this genetic improvements are considered, attempts were made to enhance the stability and activity of such enzymes, or to increase their specificity for application as efficient catalysts. Setting up bioreactors for marine metabolite production is the key point in marine biotechnology. Special culture conditions and bioengineering including different immobilized cell technologies are of great interest in this field to increase production of natural products or analogs. Although the focus of this special issue of Marine Drugs is towards the marine enzymes in toto, articles or reviews concerning bioprocesses will discuss more recent successes in chemical domain of catalysis with marine biocatalysts. This special issue dedicated to the enzymes from the sea aims to place emphasis on the importance of in-depth knowledge in this field. Sources of enzymes, marine molecular biology tools and study of marine biocatalysis focusing on bioprocesses including enzymatic characteristics such as yields, stereochemistry, special reaction conditions, isolation techniques, downstream aspects, structure of products obtained, will characterize this issue.

As the Guest Editor, I invite researchers from industry and academia, working with marine enzymes to describe recent advances in the field.

Dr. Antonio Trincone
Guest Editor

Submission

All papers should be submitted to marinedrugs@mdpi.org with copy to the Editors. To be published continuously until the deadline and papers will be listed together at the special websites. Both, research articles and review articles are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editors for announcment on this website.

Submitted papers should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. All papers are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Instructions for Authors page. Marine Drugs is an international peer-reviewed quarterly journal published by Molecular Diversity Preservation International.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a paper Open Access publication fees are 1000 CHF per paper. English correction fees (250 CHF) will be added in certain cases (1250 CHF per paper for those papers that require extensive additional formatting and/or English corrections.).

• enzymes
• biocatalysts
• marine ecology
• marine biotechnology
• biocatalysis
• extremophiles
• marine microorganisms

Type of Paper: Review
Title: Bioprocess Technologies for the Production of Marine Microbial Enzymes
Authors: Sreyashi Sarkar, Arnab Pramanik, Anindita Mitra and Joydeep Mukherjee
Affiliation: School of Environmental Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata 700 032, India; E-Mail: joydeep_envstu@school.jdvu.ac.in
Abstract: This review is a synopsis of the different bioprocess engineering approaches adopted for the production of marine microbial enzymes. Batch process has been utilized for the production of lysozyme, agarase, amylase, protease, chitinase and alginate lyase from marine bacteria and fungi in laboratory bioreactor and pilot plant scales. Sulfite oxidase has been produced by fed batch process while esterase by a continuous culture process. Different immobilized cell culture techniques have been applied for the production of protease by a marine bacterium. Solid state fermentation has been employed for the production of glutaminase from a marine bacterium and a mold. Considering the unconventional bioreactor configurations, the bubble column reactor has been used for the production of bromoperoxidase and the packed bed reactor for the production of glutaminase. Regarding the extremophiles, cold active proteases have been produced by psychrotrophic marine bacteria in bioreactors operated at 10ºC. A specially designed bioreactor functioning at 60 MPa pressure was used to cultivate a barophilic bacterium for the production of a ccb type quinol oxidase. The criteria for the selection of the type of process and bioreactor as well as the advantages of the selected strategy for production of these and other enzymes will be discussed. The possibility of the application of the new concept of niche-mimic bioreactors, which essentially is the cultivation of the producing microbe in reactor conditions that mimic its ecological niche, to the production of marine microbial enzymes will be examined.

Type of Paper: Article
Title: Microbial Marine Community as Source of Hydrolytic Enzymes. Study on Thermal Adaptation of Esterases and lipases from Marine Micro-Organisms
Authors: Luigi Mandrich and Donatella de Pascale
Affiliation: Institute of Protein Biochemistry, CNR, Via Pietro Castellino, 111, I-80131, Naples, Italy; E-Mail: d.depascale@ibp.cnr.it; Tel.: +39 081 6132 314; Fax +39 081 6132 277
Abstract: Marine microbial community is still unexplored habitat, for this reason the attention of many researchers is focused on the isolation and microbiology characterization of micro-organisms isolated from different habitats: from the polar sea, covered by the ice for most part of the year, to the deep-sea hydrotherms, where the water temperature is up to 90 °C. In this light, the marine habitat is very complex and heterogeneous with an unique common factor: salt concentration. The molecular mechanisms of adaptation to the environment of an organism is reflected at different levels, in terms of genes and proteins expression, which are intrinsically adapted to the particular physical/chemical state. Since the amino acid composition is strictly related to the environmental adaptation, in this paper, we present an up to date overview on some features in amino acid composition of esterases and lipases from marine source. In particular we analysed enzymes belonging to the Hormone-Sensitive Lipase family (HSL), isolated from psychrophilic, mesophilic, thermophilic and hyperthermophilic micro-organisms.