Identification and engineering on the nonconserved residues of metallo‐β‐lactamase‐type thioesterase to improve the enzymatic activity

The standalone metallo‐β‐lactamase‐type thioesterase (MβL‐TE), belongs to the group V nonreducing polyketide synthase agene cluster, catalyzes the rate‐limiting step of product releasing. Our work first investigated on the orthologous MβL‐TEs from different origins to determine which nonconserved amino acid residues are important to the hydrolysis efficiency. A series of chimeric MβL‐TEs were constructed by fragment swapping and site‐directed mutagenesis, in vivo enzymatic assay showed that two nonconserved residues A19 and E75 (numbering in HyTE) were critical to the catalytic performance. Protein structure modeling suggested that these two residues are located in different areas of HyTE. A19 is on the entrance to the active sites, whereas E75 resides in the linker between the two β strands which hold the metal‐binding sites. Combining with computational simulations and comparative enzymatic assay, different screening criteria were set up for selecting the variants on the two noncatalytic and nonconserved key residues to improve the catalytic activity. The rational design on A19 and E75 gave five candidates in total, two (A19F and E75Q) of which were thus found significantly improved the enzymatic performance of HyTE. The double‐point mutant was constructed to further improve the activity, which was increased by 28.4‐fold on product accumulation comparing to the wild‐type HyTE. This study provides a novel approach for engineering on nonconserved residues to optimize enzymatic performance. HyTE is identified as a metallo‐β‐lactamase‐type thioesterase, which catalyzes the product releasing in endocrocin biosynthesis. Two non‐conserved amino acid residues A19 and E75 are identified to be critical to the hydrolysis efficiency of HyTE. Combining with computational simulations and comparative enzymatic assay, the rational design on A19 and E75 generated five potential more efficient variants. The double‐point mutant HyTEA19F E75Q was constructed to improve the activity by 28.4‐fold on product accumulation comparing to the wild type.