Novel Detection Method for Evaluating the Activity of an Alkaline Serine Protease from Bacillus clausii

Until now, the detection methods for serine proteases have been quite time-consuming or cannot indicate the “real” protease activity. Here, a rapid and simple method for determining the “real” activity of serine proteases toward AAPX (a kind of mixed polypeptide substrates, with X representing 20 standard amino acids) was developed. This AAPX method has high reliability, sensitivity, and repeatability and can be used for detecting the serine protease activity spectrophotometrically. Additionally, the site-directed saturation mutagenesis library of alkaline serine protease PRO (BcPRO) from Bacillus clausii was screened with this AAPX method. Three beneficial mutants S99R, S99H, and S99W were identified, and S99W displayed the highest activity. In comparison to wild-type BcPRO, S99W exhibited enhanced catalytic performance toward eight AAPX monomers, and the molecular dynamics simulation revealed the mechanism responsible for its improved activity toward AAPM. Consequently, this work provides an efficient method for detecting, characterizing, mining, and high-throughput screening of serine proteases.