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Updated: Apr 18, 2026

Measurement of Chitinase Activity in Biological Samples
Published on: August 22, 2019
Catalytic efficiency of chitinase-D on insoluble chitinous substrates was improved by fusing auxiliary domains
Jogi Madhuprakash1, Nour Eddine El Gueddari2, Bruno M Moerschbacher2
1Department of Plant Sciences, School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad, Gachibowli, Hyderabad, India.
Abstract:
Chitin is an abundant renewable polysaccharide, next only to cellulose. Chitinases are important for effective utilization of this biopolymer. Chitinase D from Serratia proteamaculans (SpChiD) is a single domain chitinase with both hydrolytic and transglycosylation (TG) activities. SpChiD had less of hydrolytic activity on insoluble polymeric chitin substrates due to the absence of auxiliary binding domains. We improved catalytic efficiency of SpChiD in degradation of insoluble chitin substrates by fusing with auxiliary domains like polycystic kidney disease (PKD) domain and chitin binding protein 21 (CBP21). Of the six different SpChiD fusion chimeras, two C-terminal fusions viz. ChiD+PKD and ChiD+CBP resulted in improved hydrolytic activity on α- and β-chitin, respectively. Time-course degradation of colloidal chitin also confirmed that these two C-terminal SpChiD fusion chimeras were more active than other chimeras. More TG products were produced for a longer duration by the fusion chimeras ChiD+PKD and PKD+ChiD+CBP.
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