Li Yang-Nan,Zhu Chen-Yuan,Xu Chen-Lu,Yu Shen,Huan Tong,Zhang Ye-Wang
A heparinase III ( Ns Hep-III) from Niabella sp . was identified, cloned, and expressed as soluble form in E. coli BL21 (DE3). With heparin as substrate, the maximum activity of Ns Hep-III of 90.0 U·mg − 1 was achieved at pH 7.1 Tris-HCl (containing 15 mM Mg 2+ ) and 30 o C. The half-life of Ns Hep-III was determined to be 5 h at 30 o C. The interactions between Ns Hep-III and substrates were studied by molecular docking. The combination of Ns Hep-III and a heparinase I from Bacteroides eggthii ( Be Hep-I) was employed to cleave heparin. Analysis of the enzymatic products of Ns Hep-III by SAX-HPLC showed seven different modified disaccharides, indicating that Ns Hep-III has a wide range of substrate specificity. The results of GPC analysis demonstrated that the average molecular weight of the product of heparin cleavage by the combination of Ns Hep-III/ Be Hep-I was reduced to 3969 Da, which accounted for 90% of all the components, and complied with the requirements of the European Pharmacopoeia. Ns Hep-III has notable activity and efficiency in cleaving heparin, which is potentially useful for the industrial production of low molecular weight heparin.
A novel heparinase III from Pedobacter schmidteae (PsHep-III) with high activity and good stability was successfully cloned, expressed, and characterized. PsHep-III displayed the highest specific activity ever reported of 192.8 U mg–1 using heparin as the substrate. It was stable at 25 °C with a half-life of 323 h in an aqueous solution. PsHep-III was employed for the depolymerization of heparin, and the enzymatic hydrolyzed products were analyzed with gel permeation chromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography. PsHep-III can break glycosidic bonds in heparin like →4]GlcNAc/GlcNAc6S/GlcNS/GlcNS6S/GlcN/GlcN6S(1 → 4)ΔUA/ΔUA2S[1 → and efficiently digest heparin into seven disaccharides including N-acetylated, N-sulfated, and N-unsubstituted modification, with molecular masses of 503, 605, 563, 563, 665, 360, and 563 Da, respectively. These results indicated that PsHep-III with broad substrate specificity could be combined with heparinase I to overcome the low selectivity at the N-acetylated modification binding sites of heparinase I. This work will contribute to the application of PsHep-III for characterizing heparin and producing low-molecular-weight heparin effectively.