Mining of two novel aldehyde dehydrogenases (DHY-SC-VUT5 and DHY-G-VUT7) from metagenome of hydrocarbon contaminated soils

BackgroundAldehyde dehydrogenases are vital for aerobic hydrocarbon degradation and is involved in the last step of catalysing the oxidation of aldehydes to carboxylic acids. With the global increase in hydrocarbon pollution of different environments, these enzymes have the potential to be used in enzymatic bioremediation applications.ResultsFifteen fosmid clones with hydrocarbon degrading potential were functionally screened to identify dehydrogenase enzymes. Accordingly, the fosmid insert of the positive clones were sequenced using PacBio next generation sequencing platform and de novo assembled using CLC Genomic Work Bench. The 1233bp long open reading frame (ORF) for DHY-SC-VUT5 was found to share a protein sequence similarity of 97.7% to short-chain dehydrogenase from E. coli. The 1470bp long ORF for DHY-G-VUT7 was found to share a protein sequence similarity of 23.9% to glycine dehydrogenase (decarboxylating) (EC 1.4.4.2) from Caulobacter vibrioides (strain NA1000 / CB15N) (Caulobacter crescentus). The in silico analyses and blast against UNIPROT protein database with the stated similarity show that the two dehydrogenases are novel. Biochemical characterization revealed, that the highest relative activity was observed at substrate concentrations of 150mM and 50mM for DHY-SC-VUT5 and DHY-G-VUT7, respectively. The K-m values were found to be 13.77mM with a V-max of 0.009135 mu mol.min(-1) and 2.832mM with a V-max of 0.005886 mu mol.min(-1) for DHY-SC-VUT5 and DHY-G-VUT7, respectively. Thus, a potent and efficient enzyme for alkyl aldehyde conversion to carboxylic acid.ConclusionThe microorganisms overexpressing the novel aldehyde dehydrogenases could be used to make up microbial cocktails for biodegradation of alkanes. Moreover, since the discovered enzymes are novel it would be interesting to solve their structures by crystallography and explore the downstream applications.