The emergence and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is pushing the need of alternative treatments. In this context, phage therapy is already a reality to successfully fight certain multiresistant bacteria. Among different phage gene products, murein hydrolases responsible of phage progeny liberation (also called lysins or endolysins) are weapons that target specific peptidoglycan bonds, leading to lysis and death of susceptible bacteria when added from the outside. In the pneumococcal system, all but one phage murein hydrolases reported to date share a choline-binding domain that recognizes cell walls containing choline residues in the (lipo)teichoic acids. Some purified pneumococcal or phage murein hydrolases, as well as several chimeric proteins combining natural catalytic and cell wall-binding domains have been used as effective antimicrobials. In this work we have constructed a novel chimeric N-acetylmuramoyl-L-alanine amidase (PL3) by fusing the catalytic domain of the Pal amidase (a phage-coded endolysin) to the cell wall-binding domain of the LytA amidase, the major pneumococcal autolysin. The physicochemical properties of PL3 and the bacteriolytic effect against several pneumococci (including 48 multiresistant representative strain) and related species, like Streptococcus pseudopneumoniae, Streptococcus mitis and Streptococcus oralis, have been studied. Results have shown that low doses of PL3, in the range of 0.5–5 µg/ml, are enough to practically sterilize all choline-containing strains tested. Moreover, a single 20-µg dose of PL3 fully protected zebrafish embryos from infection by S. pneumoniae D39 strain. Importantly, PL3 keeps 95% enzymatic activity after four weeks at 37ºC and can be lyophilized without losing activity, demonstrating a remarkable robustness. Such stability, together with a prominent efficacy against a narrow spectrum of human pathogens, confers to PL3 the characteristic to be an effective therapeutic. In addition, our results demonstrate that the structure/function-based domain shuffling approach is a successful method to construct tailor-made endolysins with higher bactericidal activities than their parental enzymes.

Nucleoside 2'-deoxyribosyltransferase (NDT) from the psychrophilic bacterium Bacillus psychrosaccharolyticus CECT 4074 has been cloned and produced for the first time. A preliminary characterization of the recombinant protein indicates that the enzyme is an NDT type II since it catalyzes the transfer of 2'-deoxyribose between purines and pyrimidines. The enzyme (BpNDT) displays a high activity and stability in a broad range of pH and temperature. In addition, different approaches for the immobilization of BpNDT onto several supports have been studied in order to prepare a suitable biocatalyst for the one-step industrial enzymatic synthesis of different therapeutic nucleosides. Best results were obtained by adsorbing the enzyme on PEI-functionalized agarose and subsequent cross-linking with aldehyde-dextran (20 kDa and 70% oxidation degree). The immobilized enzyme could be recycled for at least 30 consecutive cycles in the synthesis of 2'-deoxyadenosine from 2'-deoxyuridine and adenine at 37 °C and pH 8.0, with a 25% loss of activity. High conversion yield of trifluridine (64.4%) was achieved in 2 h when 20 mM of 2'-deoxyuridine and 10 mM 5-trifluorothymine were employed in the transglycosylation reaction catalyzed by immobilized BpNDT at 37 °C and pH 7.5.

Structure-function relationships of a novel 2′-deoxyribosyltransferase from the psychrotolerant bacterium Bacillus psychrosaccharolyticus (BpNDT) have been exhaustively studied by biochemical and high resolution crystallographic analyses. Despite BpNDT exhibiting some structural features characteristic of cold-adapted enzymes such as localized flexibility in critical loops, its biochemical properties are typical of mesophilic enzymes. BpNDT is a highly symmetrical homohexamer with tightly associated subunits that possesses flexible and short loops bordering the active sites. The catalytic center is essentially identical to that of other mesophilic homologues. Moreover, BpNDT shows that it is a mesophilic-like enzyme since it is not heat-labile and exhibits an apparent unfolding temperature (T_m) of 49 °C, being active during 96 h at 40 and 50 °C. Finally, BpNDT synthesizes natural and modified nucleosides, with preference for purines as acceptors and pyrimidine nucleosides as donors. Remarkably, the synthesis of several therapeutic nucleosides has been efficiently carried out. In this sense, 5-hydroxymethyl-2′-deoxyuridine (5-HMdUrd), 7-deaza-6-hydroxypurine-2′-deoxyriboside (7-DHPdRib) and theophylline-2′-deoxyriboside were synthesized for the first time by an NDT enzyme, showing the biotechnological interest of BpNDT.