An acidic, thermostable exochitinase with β-N-acetylglucosaminidase activity from Paenibacillus barengoltzii converting chitin to N-acetyl glucosamine

N-acetyl-β-D-glucosamine (GlcNAc) is widely used as a valuable pharmacological agent and a functional food additive. The traditional chemical process for GlcNAc production has some problems such as high production cost, low yield, and acidic pollution. Hence, to identify a novel chitinase that is suitable for bioconversion of chitin to GlcNAc is of great value. A novel chitinase gene (PbChi74) from Paenibacillus barengoltzii was cloned and heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli as an intracellular soluble protein. The gene has an open reading frame (ORF) of 2,163 bp encoding 720 amino acids. The recombinant chitinase (PbChi74) was purified to apparent homogeneity with a purification fold of 2.2 and a recovery yield of 57.9%. The molecular mass of the purified enzyme was estimated to be 74.6 kDa and 74.3 kDa by SDS-PAGE and gel filtration, respectively. PbChi74 displayed an acidic pH optimum of 4.5 and a temperature optimum of 65°C. The enzyme showed high activity toward colloidal chitin, glycol chitin, N-acetyl chitooligosaccharides, and p-nitrophenyl N-acetyl β-glucosaminide. PbChi74 hydrolyzed colloidal chitin to yield N- acetyl chitobiose [(GlcNAc)2] at the initial stage, which was further converted to its monomer N-acetyl glucosamine (GlcNAc), suggesting that it is an exochitinase with β-N-acetylglucosaminidase activity. The purified PbChi74 coupled with RmNAG (β-N-acetylglucosaminidase from Rhizomucor miehei) was used to convert colloidal chitin to GlcNAc, and GlcNAc was the sole end product at a concentration of 27.8 mg mL-1 with a conversion yield of 92.6%. These results suggest that PbChi74 may have great potential in chitin conversion. The excellent thermostability and hydrolytic properties may give the exochitinase great potential in GlcNAc production from chitin. This is the first report on an exochitinase with N-acetyl-β-D-glucosaminidase activity from Paenibacillus species.