Chitin is an important renewable biomass of immense commercial interest. The processing of this biopolymer into value-added products in an environmentally-friendly manner necessitates its conversion into N-acetyl glucosamine (NAG), a reaction mediated by the enzyme chitinase. Here we report on the ability of the soil microbe Pseudomonas fluorescens to secrete copious amounts of chitinase in the...

Chitinases have the ability of chitin digestion that constitutes a main compound of the cell wall in many of the phytopathogens such as fungi. In the following investigation, a novel chitinase with antifungal activity was characterized from a native Serratia marcescens B4A. Partially purified enzyme had an apparent molecular mass of 54 kDa. It indicated an optimum activity in pH 5 at 45°C. Enzy...

Chitin is an essential structural polysaccharide in fungi that is required for cell shape and morphogenesis. One model for wall synthesis at the growing cell surface suggests that the compliance that is necessary for turgor-driven expansion of the cell wall involves a delicate balance of wall synthesis and lysis. Accordingly, de novo chitin synthesis may involve coordinated regulation of member...

BACKGROUND It has long been known that the polycarbohydrates on the neoplastic cell surface are different from those on normal cells; differences which allow one to attack tumor cells selectively. Although the exact differences between tumor cells and normal cells are still not clearly known, research into these differences is ongoing for anticancer drug development. MATERIALS AND METHODS The...

Plant chitinases, a class of glycosyl hydrolases, participate in various aspects of normal plant growth and development, including cell wall metabolism and disease resistance. The rice (Oryza sativa) genome encodes 37 putative chitinases and chitinase-like proteins. However, none of them has been characterized at the genetic level. In this study, we report the isolation of a brittle culm mutant...

The ability of marine bacteria to adhere to detrital particulate organic matter and rapidly switch on metabolic genes in an effort to reproduce is an important response for bacterial survival in the pelagic marine environment. The goal of this investigation was to evaluate the relationship between chitinolytic gene expression and extracellular chitinase activity in individual cells of the marin...

The gastrointestinal tract of animals is adapted to their primary source of food to optimize resource use and energy intake. Temperate bat species mainly feed on arthropods. These contain the energy-rich carbohydrate chitin, which is indigestible for the endogenous enzymes of a typical mammalian gastrointestinal tract. However, the gastrointestinal tract of bat species should be adapted to thei...

Chitin is an abundant biopolymer whose degradation is mediated primarily by bacterial chitinases. We developed a degenerate PCR primer set to amplify a approximately 900-bp fragment of family 18, group I chitinase genes and used it to retrieve these gene fragments from environmental samples. Clone libraries of presumptive chitinase genes were created for nine water and six sediment samples from...

The present investigation highlights the process parameters influencing the submerged fermentation of chitinase by Bacillus pumilus JUBCH08, purification and characterization of the enzyme and determination of antagonistic activity of the bacterium against Fusarium oxysporum. Medium supplemented with 0.5 % chitin and peptone, at initial pH 8.0, when incubated at 35 °C for 72 h favored highest c...

A cDNA encoding a chitinase-related receptor-like kinase, designated CHRK1, was isolated from tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum). The C-terminal kinase domain (KD) of CHRK1 contained all of the conserved amino acids of serine/threonine protein kinases. The putative extracellular domain was closely related to the class V chitinase of tobacco and to microbial chitinases. CHRK1 mRNA accumulation was stro...