Lambda-carrageenase is an enzyme

Enzyme

Enzymes are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. In enzymatic reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process, called substrates, are converted into different molecules, called products. Almost all chemical reactions in a biological cell need enzymes in order to occur at rates...

 which breaks down a polysaccharide

Polysaccharide

Polysaccharides are long carbohydrate molecules, of repeated monomer units joined together by glycosidic bonds. They range in structure from linear to highly branched. Polysaccharides are often quite heterogeneous, containing slight modifications of the repeating unit. Depending on the structure,...

 found in red seaweeds

Seaweed

Seaweed is a loose, colloquial term encompassing macroscopic, multicellular, benthic marine algae. The term includes some members of the red, brown and green algae...

, lambda-carrageenan

Carrageenan

Carrageenans or carrageenins are a family of linear sulfated polysaccharides that are extracted from red seaweeds. There are several varieties of carrageen used in cooking and baking. Kappa-carrageenan is used mostly in breading and batter due to its gelling nature...

. This enzyme has only been found in marine

Marine (ocean)

Marine is an umbrella term. As an adjective it is usually applicable to things relating to the sea or ocean, such as marine biology, marine ecology and marine geology...

 bacteria

Bacteria

Bacteria are a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals...

.

Species distribution

Two bacteria which produce lambda-carrageenase have been found. The marine bacterium Pseudoalteromonas carrageenovora

Pseudoalteromonas carrageenovora

Pseudoalteromonas carrageenovora is a marine bacterium....

(also known as Alteromonas carrageenovora) strain ATCC 43555, which was isolated from sea water

Seawater

Seawater is water from a sea or ocean. On average, seawater in the world's oceans has a salinity of about 3.5% . This means that every kilogram of seawater has approximately of dissolved salts . The average density of seawater at the ocean surface is 1.025 g/ml...

 in Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...

, and the deep-sea

Deep sea

The deep sea, or deep layer, is the lowest layer in the ocean, existing below the thermocline and above the seabed, at a depth of 1000 fathoms or more. Little or no light penetrates this part of the ocean and most of the organisms that live there rely for subsistence on falling organic matter...

 bacterial isolate Pseudoalteromonas

Pseudoalteromonas

Pseudoalteromonas is a genus of marine bacterium.-Species:*Pseudoalteromonas agarivorans *Pseudoalteromonas antarctica *Pseudoalteromonas atlantica...

sp. CL19, which was isolated from a sediment

Sediment

Sediment is naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of fluids such as wind, water, or ice, and/or by the force of gravity acting on the particle itself....

 sample from Suruga Bay

Suruga Bay

Suruga Bay is a bay on the Pacific coast of Honshū in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. It is situated north of an imaginary line joining Omaezaki Point and Irōzaki Point at the tip of the Izu Peninsula and surrounded by Honshū to the southwest and west and the Izu Peninsula to the east.-Geology:Suruga...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

.

Properties of the enzyme

In both Alteromonas carrageenovora and Pseudoalteromonas sp. CL19, lambda-carrageenase is encoded by the cglA gene

Gene

A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...

. The product of this gene is a protein

Protein

Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...

 consisting of 942 amino acids

Amino acid

Amino acids are molecules containing an amine group, a carboxylic acid group and a side-chain that varies between different amino acids. The key elements of an amino acid are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen...

, this protein includes a 25 amino acid signal peptide

Signal peptide

A signal peptide is a short peptide chain that directs the transport of a protein.Signal peptides may also be called targeting signals, signal sequences, transit peptides, or localization signals....

. Lambda-carrageenase is found as a monomer

Monomer

A monomer is an atom or a small molecule that may bind chemically to other monomers to form a polymer; the term "monomeric protein" may also be used to describe one of the proteins making up a multiprotein complex...

. Its optimum pH

PH

In chemistry, pH is a measure of the acidity or basicity of an aqueous solution. Pure water is said to be neutral, with a pH close to 7.0 at . Solutions with a pH less than 7 are said to be acidic and solutions with a pH greater than 7 are basic or alkaline...

 for activity is 7.0, and optimum temperature is 35ºC. The enzyme specifically hydrolyses

Hydrolysis

Hydrolysis is a chemical reaction during which molecules of water are split into hydrogen cations and hydroxide anions in the process of a chemical mechanism. It is the type of reaction that is used to break down certain polymers, especially those made by condensation polymerization...

 lambda-carrageenan, and is not active against iota- and kappa-carrageenans, agarose

Agar

Agar or agar-agar is a gelatinous substance derived from a polysaccharide that accumulates in the cell walls of agarophyte red algae. Throughout history into modern times, agar has been chiefly used as an ingredient in desserts throughout Asia and also as a solid substrate to contain culture medium...

 or porphyran

Porphyran

Porphyran is a sulfated carbohydrate dervied from red algae of the genus Porphyra.-Composition:Porphyran is a complex sulphated carbohydrate. It is a highly substituted agarose with a linear backbone consisting of 3-linked beta-D-galactosyl units alternating with either 4-linked alpha-L-galactosyl...

.

Mechanism of action

Lambda-carrageenase cleaves the beta 1-4 glycosidic bonds

Glycosidic bond

In chemistry, a glycosidic bond is a type of covalent bond that joins a carbohydrate molecule to another group, which may or may not be another carbohydrate....

 in the linear backbone of lambda-carrageenan. This results in the formation of a tetrasaccharide

Tetrasaccharide

A tetrasaccharide is a carbohydrate which gives upon hydrolysis four molecules of the same or different monosaccharides. For example, stachyose upon hydrolysis gives one molecule each of glucose and fructose and two molecules of galactose. The general formula of a tetrasaccharide is typically...

: alpha-D-Galp2,6S(2)-(1->3)-beta-D-Galp2S-(1->4)-alpha-D-Galp2,6S(2)-(1->3)-D-Galp2S. This enzyme acts via a single displacement mechanism, causing an inversion of anomeric configuration

Anomeric effect

In organic chemistry, the anomeric effect or Edward-Lemieux effect is a stereoelectronic effect that describes the tendency of heteroatomic substituents adjacent to a heteroatom within a cyclohexane ring to prefer the axial orientation instead of the less hindered equatorial orientation that would...

 of the substrate.

External links

• Glycosyl hydrolases on CAZYpedia