2009 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Metagenome analysis for the classification of enzymes related to hydrolysis of bacterial cell wall by sequential and enzymatic analysis

Research Project

Project/Area Number	19700276
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Bioinformatics/Life informatics
Research Institution	Kyushu University
Principal Investigator	HIRAKAWA Hideki Kyushu University, 植物ゲノム研究部, 研究員 (80372746)
Project Period (FY)	2007 – 2009
Keywords	メタゲノム解析 / 加水分解酵素 / 配列解析 / 酵素化学 / タンパク質立体構造
Research Abstract	The enzymes related to hydrolyze the bacterial peptidoglycan were explored from the genes sequenced by metagenome projects and were classified into the five groups defined by their catalytic sites in peptidoglycan. Among the five groups, the genes related to endopeptidase were most frequently found in the metagenomic data. We estimated that the three-dimensional structure and binding sites of about 2,500 proteins could be predicted. Furthermore, to predict the binding site precisely, the binding simulations between peptidoglycan were performed for lyzozyme and ALE-1, one of the endopeptidase. As results, twenty-four and thirteen amino acid residues were predicted to be interacted with the peptidoglycan in lysozyme and ALE-1, respectively. The protein functions and binding sites could be predicted by using the domain and structural information obtained from metagenomic data. In the future, we would construct the analysis system which could perform these analyses to design highly efficient enzymes.