Aspergillus ficuum Phytase: Complete Primary Structure Elucidation by Chemical Sequencing

The primary structure of Aspergillus ficuum phytase was deduced from overlaps in peptide sequences. The unglycosylated enzyme is a 441 residue protein with a molecular mass of 48.5-KDa, as calculated from the total covalent structure. The estimated pI of the protein is about 4.76. Of the 19 Asn residues, 9 were found to be glycosylated. The phytase consists of 37% non-polar, 42% polar, 11.5% acidic, and 9.5% basic amino acids. The putative active site of the enzyme containing the sequence RHG is located at the N-terminal region of the molecule and shows homology to the active site of both microbial and mammalian acid phosphatases, and phosphoglycerate mutase.