METHOD FOR MODIFYING ENZYME HAVING NITRILE HYDRATASE ACTIVITY

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a method for modifying an enzyme having nitrile hydratase activities, concretely, the method for modifying the enzyme, comprising changing various properties of the enzyme such as activities without damaging the activities originally possessed by the nitrile hydratase by inducing mutation changing a three-dimensional structure of the nitrile hydratase in a nitrile hydratase gene; and to provide a gene encoding the modified enzyme, a plasmid and a cell strain containing the gene, and a method for producing a corresponding amide compound from a nitrile compound by using the cell strain. SOLUTION: The method for producing the corresponding amide compound from the nitrile compound comprises modifying the nitrile hydratase by changing the amino acid at the region of a modification object in the amino acid sequence of the nitrile hydratase by substitution/insertion/deletion, or the like, making the plasmid containing the modified enzyme gene obtained by the modification, making the cell strain by transformation by the plasmid, and using the enzyme produced by using the cell strain or the cultured liquid/cells/cell-treated material obtained by culturing the cell strain. COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI