Unscrambling thermal stability and temperature adaptation in evolved variants of a cold-active lipase

Directed evolution by error-prone PCR was applied to stabilize the cold-active lipase from Pseudomonas fragi (PFL). PFL displays high activity at 10 °C, but it is highly unstable even at moderate temperatures. After two rounds of evolution, a variant was generated with a 5-fold increase in half-life at 42 °C and a shift of 10 °C in the temperature optimum, nevertheless retaining cold-activity. The evolved lipase displayed specific activity higher than the wild type enzyme in the temperature range 29–42 °C. Biophysical measurements did not indicate any obvious difference between the improved variant and the wild type enzyme in terms of loss of secondary structure upon heat treatment, nor a shift in the apparent melting temperature.