Evidence for transcription of three genes with characteristics of hydrogenases in the green alga Chlamydomonas noctigama

Some green algae have shown the ability to produce hydrogen under anaerobic conditions. The production of hydrogen in green algae is catalyzed by hydrogenases, which are small monomeric enzymes with high conversion efficiency and high oxygen sensitivity. Most green algae analyzed to date where hydrogenase genes are detected, have been shown to contain two distinct hydrogenases. However, very little is known about which functions the two different enzymes represent. There are also many unknowns within the mechanisms behind hydrogen production as to the roles hydrogenases play under different conditions, and consequently also about the potential for optimization of a hydrogen production process which could be found in this respect. This study focuses on the possibility for the presence of more than two hydrogenases in a single green alga. A large number of degenerate primers were designed and used to produce 3′-RACE products, which in turn were used to design gene specific primers used for PCR and 5′-RACE reactions. The sequences were aligned with known algal hydrogenases to identify products which had homology to these. Products where homology was identified were then explored further. A high number of clones from each band were sequenced to identify products with similar lengths which would not show up as separate bands on a gel. Sequences found to have homology with algal hydrogenases were translated into putative amino acid sequences and analyzed further to obtain detailed information about the presence of specific amino acids with known functions in the enzyme. This information was used to evaluate the likelihood of these transcripts coding for true hydrogenases, versus hydrogenase-like or narf-like proteins.We here present evidence showing that Chlamydomonas noctigama is able to transcribe three genes which share a significant number of characteristics with other known algal FeFe-hydrogenases. The three genes have been annotated HYDA1, HYDA2 and HYDA3.