Cloning, purification and biochemical characterisation of an organic solvent-, detergent-, and thermo-stable amylopullulanase from Thermococcus kodakarensis KOD1

• An amylopullulanase from Thermococcus (Apu-Tk) was cloned and purified to homogeneity.
• The optimal temperature for Apu-Tk to hydrolyse pullulan and starch was >100 °C.
• The Apu-Tk was active at a broad range of pH (4–7) with the optimum pH at 5.0–5.5.
• Apu-Tk retained >30% activity in the presence of 8% SDS or 10% β-mercaptoethanol.

Thermostable amylopullulanases can catalyse the hydrolysis of both α-1,4 and α-1,6 glucosidic bonds and are of considerable interest in the starch saccharification industry. In this study, the gene Apu-Tk encoding an extracellular amylopullulanase was cloned from an extremely thermophilic anaerobic archaeon Thermococcus kodakarensis KOD1. Apu-Tk encodes an 1100-amino acid protein with a 27-residue signal peptide, which has a predicted mass of 125 kDa after signal peptide cleavage. Sequence alignments showed that Apu-Tk contains the five regions conserved in all GH57 family proteins. Full-length Apu-Tk was expressed in Escherichia coli and purified to homogeneity. The purified enzyme displayed both pullulanase and amylase activity. The optimal temperature for Apu-Tk to hydrolyse pullulan and soluble starch was >100 °C. Apu-Tk was also active at a broad range of pH (4–7), with an optimum pH of ~5.0–5.5. Apu-Tk also retained >30% of its original activity and partially folded globular structure in the presence of 8% SDS or 10% β-mercaptoethanol. The high yield, broad pH range, and stability of Apu-Tk implicate it as a potential enzyme for industrial applications.