TY - JOUR
T1 - Organomercurials removal by heterogeneous merB genes harboring bacterial strains
AU - Chien, Mei Fang
AU - Narita, Masaru
AU - Lin, Kuo Hsing
AU - Matsui, Kazuaki
AU - Huang, Chieh Chen
AU - Endo, Ginro
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan ( 21651038 ) and Japan–Taiwan Collaboration Research Program by Interchange Association, Japan (IAJ). We thank Dr. Simon Silver (University of Illinois at Chicago), Dr. Hidemitsu Pan-Hou (Setsunan University), and Dr. Elena Bogdanova (Russian Academy of Sciences) for providing the mercury-resistant strains. We are grateful to Dr. Simon Silver for valuable discussions. We also thank Mitsunori Sato, Kiyotaka Yusa, Kazuya Taneichi, and Yasushi Takano (Tohoku Gakuin University) for assistance during this study.
PY - 2010/7
Y1 - 2010/7
N2 - Organomercury lyase (MerB) is a key enzyme in bacterial detoxification and bioremediation of organomercurials. However, the merB gene is often considered as an ancillary component of the mer operon because there is zero to three merB genes in different mer operons identified so far. In this study, organomercurials' removal abilities of native mercury-resistant bacteria that have one or multiple merB genes were examined. Each heterogeneous merB genes from these bacteria was further cloned into Escherichia coli to investigate the substrate specificity of each MerB enzyme. The merB1 gene from Bacillus megaterium MB1 conferred the highest volatilization ability to methylmercury chloride, ethylmercury chloride, thimerosal and p-chloromercuribenzoate, while the merB3 from B. megaterium MB1 conferred the fastest mercury volatilization activity to p-chloromercuribenzoate. The substrate specificities among these MerB enzymes show the necessity for selecting the appropriate bacteria strains or MerB enzymes to apply them in bioremediation engineering for cleaning up specific organomercurial contaminations.
AB - Organomercury lyase (MerB) is a key enzyme in bacterial detoxification and bioremediation of organomercurials. However, the merB gene is often considered as an ancillary component of the mer operon because there is zero to three merB genes in different mer operons identified so far. In this study, organomercurials' removal abilities of native mercury-resistant bacteria that have one or multiple merB genes were examined. Each heterogeneous merB genes from these bacteria was further cloned into Escherichia coli to investigate the substrate specificity of each MerB enzyme. The merB1 gene from Bacillus megaterium MB1 conferred the highest volatilization ability to methylmercury chloride, ethylmercury chloride, thimerosal and p-chloromercuribenzoate, while the merB3 from B. megaterium MB1 conferred the fastest mercury volatilization activity to p-chloromercuribenzoate. The substrate specificities among these MerB enzymes show the necessity for selecting the appropriate bacteria strains or MerB enzymes to apply them in bioremediation engineering for cleaning up specific organomercurial contaminations.
KW - Bioremediation
KW - Mercury resistance
KW - Organomercurial removal
KW - Organomercury lyase gene
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jbiosc.2010.01.010
DO - 10.1016/j.jbiosc.2010.01.010
M3 - Article
C2 - 20541123
AN - SCOPUS:77953120704
VL - 110
SP - 94
EP - 98
JO - Journal of Bioscience and Bioengineering
JF - Journal of Bioscience and Bioengineering
SN - 1389-1723
IS - 1
ER -