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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, April 2002, p. 1610-1615, Vol. 68, No. 4
0099-2240/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/AEM.68.4.1610-1615.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Sections of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of California, Davis, California 95616
Received 8 August 2001/ Accepted 15 January 2002
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The cell walls of higher plants are the most abundant potential source of fermentable sugars in the world (8). If these cell walls could be converted biologically to fuels (for example, ethanol), we could obtain not only economic benefits but also environmental benefits, such as reduction of greenhouse gas emission (14). To decrease the cost of biomass ethanol production, it is necessary to increase the rate of enzymatic degradation of plant cell walls. Recently, it was shown that recombinant cellulosomes could be assembled in vitro (16). This development is a first step in the path to produce recombinant cellulosomes with increased plant cell wall-degrading activity.
All cellulosomal enzymatic subunits contain a duplicated sequence called the dockerin domain (10). The dockerin domains bind to the hydrophobic domains termed cohesin domains (26, 28), which are repeated nine times in CbpA (20). As described above, 11 cellulosomal enzymatic subunits of C. cellulovorans have been cloned already. Since one CbpA binds at most nine enzymatic subunits, it seems likely that C. cellulovorans produces cellulosomes having different subunit compositions. So far, it has been observed that carbon sources in the medium have an effect on enzymatic activity and enzyme composition (15, 23). Pohlschroder et al. reported that Clostridium papyrosolvens C7 produces at least seven different forms of cellulosomes and that each type of cellulosome has a different enzymatic activity (17, 18). These results indicate that Clostridium species actually produce heterogeneous cellulosomes and that the enzymatic activity of each cellulosome depends on its subunit composition.
To design recombinant cellulosomes for effective degradation of plant cell walls, it is necessary to determine the subunit compositions of cellulosomes that are produced under various growth conditions. In this study, we partially purified cellulosomes from C. cellulovorans culture supernatants and determined their subunit compositions and enzymatic activities. The cellulosomes contained nine subunits (the scaffolding protein CbpA, endoglucanases EngE and EngK, cellobiohydrolase ExgS, xylanase XynA, mannanase ManA, and three unknown proteins). The relative molar amount of each subunit was determined. Since only cellobiose was released from plant cell walls by the cellulosomes, cellobiohydrolases were considered to be one of the key enzymes for plant cell wall degradation. The subunit composition of the cellulosomes, determined in this study, should serve as a good starting model for designing recombinant cellulosomes that are able to degrade plant cell walls effectively.
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Enzyme preparation.
C. cellulovorans ATCC 35296 was grown by the method of Sleat et al. (21). The bacteria were cultivated anaerobically at 37°C for 2 days in 250 ml of medium containing a carbon source at a concentration of 0.5%. The culture supernatant was concentrated and dialyzed as described previously (19) and was dissolved in 10 ml of phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) buffer (50 mM KH2PO4, 50 mM K2HPO4; pH 6.8).
Purification of cellulosomes.
Seventy-five milliliters of concentrated culture supernatant of C. cellulovorans cells grown with pectin was precipitated with (NH4)2SO4, dialyzed, and purified by cellulose affinity chromatography as described previously (19). The cellulose-binding fraction was ultrafiltered with Ultra free biomax 100 k NMWL (Millipore) and concentrated to a volume of 1 ml. Then the 1-ml concentrated solution was applied to a High Q cartridge (1 ml; Bio-Rad) equilibrated with 50 mM Tris-HCl buffer (pH 8.0). After the column was washed with 3 ml of the same buffer, it was eluted with a stepwise gradient of NaCl (50 mM to 1 M).
Assay of enzymatic activities.
The activities on corn stem powder (for cellwallase), Avicel (for cellulase), CMC (for endoglucanase), xylan (for xylanase), locust bean gum (for mannanase), and pectin (for pectate lyase) were assayed at pH 6.0 and 37°C by measuring the liberated reducing sugars as D-glucose equivalents by the Somogyi-Nelson method (27). Each reaction mixture consisted of 250 µl of a 1% substrate solution, 100 µl of 500 mM morpholineethanesulfonic acid (MES)-NaOH buffer (pH 6.0), and 150 µl of an enzyme solution. The incubation times were 30 min for endoglucanase, xylanase, mannanase, and pectate lyase activities and 12 h for cellulase and cellwallase activities. Activity was expressed in units; 1 U was defined as the amount of enzyme that released 1 µmol of reducing sugar per min.
Protein determination.
The concentration of protein was measured by the method of Bradford (1) with a protein assay kit from Bio-Rad, using bovine serum albumin as the standard.
Preparation of antibodies.
Antibodies against CbpA (formerly called anti-P170) and ExgS (formerly called anti-P70) were prepared as described previously (15). Antibody against EngE was prepared as described previously (15) by using purified recombinant EngE expressed in Escherichia coli (22).
SDS-PAGE, zymograms, and Western blotting.
Sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) was performed in a 10% polyacrylamide gel by the method of Laemmli (12). To determine the approximate molar amount of a band, densitometry was performed with image-processing software (NIH Image 1.49) as described previously (15). The density of a band was divided by the apparent molecular weight of the band to calculate the relative molar amount. The molar amount of each protein was expressed relative to the amount of the P1 band, which was arbitrarily assigned a value of 1. Endoglucanase and xylanase zymograms were obtained by using 0.1% CMC or 0.1% xylan copolymerized with 10% polyacrylamide and 0.1% SDS as described previously (19). For Western blotting, proteins were separated by SDS-PAGE and blotted onto a polyvinylidene difluoride membrane (Immobilon-P; Millipore). The membrane was treated with antibody (diluted 1:5,000) and stained as described previously (22).
N-terminal amino acid sequencing.
The proteins blotted onto an Immobilon-P polyvinylidene difluoride membrane were sequenced by using a model 477 protein sequencer (Applied Biosystems).
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Since corn stover is a potential substrate for biomass conversion to obtain fermentable sugars (9), we used corn stem powder as the substrate for the assay of the plant cell wall-degrading activity of C. cellulovorans enzymes. The amount of reducing sugar liberated from the powdered corn stems was designated the cellwallase activity. As shown in Table 1, the culture grown with cellobiose produced the most cellwallase activity, and the culture supernatant from cells grown with pectin exhibited the highest cellwallase specific activity.
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TABLE 1. Effect of carbon source in culture medium on plant cellwallase production
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FIG. 1. High Q cartridge anion-exchange column chromatography profile of cellulose-binding fraction from C. cellulovorans culture supernatant. The column was eluted with a stepwise gradient of NaCl (50 mM to 1 M); the NaCl concentrations are indicated by arrows. The amounts of protein (A280), cellwallase activity and cellulase activity of each fraction (0.5 ml) are shown. The cellulosome 1 and cellulosome 2 fractions are indicated at the top.
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FIG. 2. SDS-PAGE analysis of cellulosome 1 and cellulosome 2. (A) Silver-stained SDS-PAGE gel containing cellulosome 1 (lane 1) and cellulosome 2 (lane 2). The numbers on the left are the molecular masses (in kilodaltons) of the markers. (B) Relative molar amounts of the subunits of cellulosome 1 (solid bars) and cellulosome 2 (open bars). The SDS-PAGE gel was stained with Coomassie brilliant blue R-250 and analyzed by densitometry. The amount of each protein was expressed as a relative molar amount; the intensity of the P1 band was arbitrarily assigned a value of 1.
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TABLE 2. Enzymatic activities of partially purified cellulosomal fractions
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Identification of cellulosomal subunits.
Since cellulosome 1 exhibited higher cellwallase specific activity, the cellulosomal subunits of cellulosome 1 were identified. To identify the subunits, Western blotting, N-terminal amino acid sequencing, and a zymogram analysis of endoglucanase and xylanase were performed. The results are summarized in Table 3.
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TABLE 3. Identification of the subunits of cellulosome 1
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FIG. 3. Western blot analysis of cellulosome 1. Lane 1, gel stained with Coomassie brilliant blue R-250; lane 2, gel immuno-stained with anti-CbpA; lane 3, gel immuno-stained with anti-EngE; lane 4; gel immuno-stained with anti-ExgS. The numbers on the left are the molecular masses (in kilodaltons) of the markers.
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Zymogram analyses (data not shown) indicated that P2 had strong endoglucanase activity, P3 had weak endoglucanase activity, and P7 had xylanase activity, supporting the conclusion that P7 was XynA. P8 exhibited neither endoglucanase nor xylanase activity. Since no genes for noncellulase or nonxylanase proteins with the molecular weight of P8 have been cloned (25), P8 also is probably a new cellulosomal protein.
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Two different cellulosomal fractions were isolated from the supernatant of cells grown with pectin by anion-exchange chromatography of the cellulose-binding fraction. Both cellulosome 1 and cellulosome 2 contained nine subunits, although the relative amounts of the subunits differed in the two cellulosomal fractions. Moreover, the enzymatic activities in the fractions were also different. These results indicated that C. cellulovorans grown with pectin produced heterogeneous cellulosomes, as has been shown with C. papyrosolvens C7 cellulosomes (17, 18).
Since scaffolding protein CbpA has nine cohesin domains that bind enzymatic subunits, CbpA could bind at most nine enzymatic subunits (3). Therefore, if the isolated cellulosomal fractions were completely purified, the molar amounts of enzymatic subunits P2 to P9 should satisfy two requirements: (i) each molar amount of enzyme should be an integer of CbpA and (ii) the sum of the molar amounts of enzymes should be nine. To make the molar amounts of the enzyme shown in Fig. 2B integers, we rounded the data to obtain the following molar amounts: for cellulosome 1 P1 to P9, 1, 1, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1, 1, and 2, respectively; and for cellulosome 2 P1 to P9, 1, 3, 2, 3, 1, 1, 0, 0, and 1, respectively. Consequently, the values resulted in sums for the relative molar amounts of P2 to P9 that were greater than nine for both cellulosomal fractions. Thus, these results indicate that both isolated cellulosomal fractions were impure; i.e., they probably contained mixtures of cellulosomes. Moreover, even if the compositions of cellulosomes in the isolated cellulosomal fractions were similar to each other, there were still large numbers of possible permutations for enzymatic subunits to bind to CbpA. Thus, we assumed that the two isolated cellulosomal fractions contained heterogeneous mixtures of cellulosomes.
Six of the nine subunits of the isolated cellulosomal fractions could be assigned to known proteins, including CbpA (20), EngE (22), EngK (25), ExgS (13), XynA (11), and ManA (23), and three subunits were unknown proteins. It has been suggested that the endoglucanase, xylanase, and mannanase activities of the cellulosomes come mainly from EngE (P2), XynA (P7), and ManA (P9), respectively. The differences in endoglucanase, xylanase, and mannanase activities between cellulosome 1 and cellulosome 2 were in quite good agreement with the differences in the relative amounts of P2, P7, and P9 found for the two types of cellulosomes.
Since the isolated cellulosomal fractions released only cellobiose from corn stem powder, degradation of cellulose to cellobiose was considered one of the key reactions for plant cell wall degradation by the cellulosomes. In general, crystalline cellulose is degraded by synergistic activity of endoglucanases and cellobiohydrolases (5-7). Cellobiohydrolase is an enzyme that releases cellobiose from crystalline cellulose. Among the enzymatic subunits on the purified cellulosome, ExgS has been characterized as a cellobiohydrolase, and its major hydrolytic product is cellobiose (13). Moreover, P4 (assigned to ExgS) is one of the major subunits of the purified cellulosomes. Thus, ExgS is expected to play an important role in degrading cellulose in plant cell walls.
The main components of the plant cell walls in corn stems are cellulose (about 40%), hemicellulose (mainly glucuronoarabinoxylan; about 20%), and lignin (about 20%) (2, 9). Each cellulose microfibril in plant cell walls is cross-linked by hemicelluloses (2). Thus, it is necessary for cellulosomes to degrade hemicellulose connections to gain access to cellulose microfibrils in the plant cell walls. Although the levels of the cellulase activities of cellulosome 1 and cellulosome 2 were the same, the cellwallase activity of cellulosome 2 was much less than that of cellulosome 1. One possible explanation of this result is that the ability of cellulosome 2 to gain access to cellulose microfibrils in plant cell walls might be less than that of cellulosome 1. Since cellulosome 1 contained more XynA (P7), ManA (P9), P6, and P8 than cellulosome 2, these subunits may help the cellulosomes gain access to cellulose microfibrils more readily.
In this study, we isolated two cellulosomal fractions that degrade plant cell walls and determined the relative amounts of their enzymatic subunits. The composition of cellulosome 1, which exhibited higher cellwallase activity than cellulosome 2, could be a good starting model for designing recombinant cellulosomes that degrade plant cell walls effectively. We plan to prepare recombinant cellulosomes with the various enzymatic subunits that were identified in this study, as well as additional subunits. Analysis of these recombinant cellulosomes is expected to provide new insights not only for understanding the mechanism of plant cell wall degradation but also for preparing designer cellulosomes that degrade plant cell walls effectively.
This research was supported in part by grant DE-DDF03-92ER20069 from the U.S. Department of Energy.
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