High stabilization and hyperactivation of a Recombinant β-Xylosidase through Immobilization Strategies

Attainment of a stable and highly active β-xylosidase is of major importance for the efficient and cost-competitive hydrolysis of hemicellulose xylan, as well as for its industrial conversion into biofuels and biochemicals. Here, a recombinant β-xylosidase of the glycoside hydrolase family (GH43) from Bacillus subtilis was produced in Escherichia coli culture, purified, and subsequently immobilized on agarose and chitosan. Glutaraldehyde and glyoxyl groups were evaluated as activating agents to select the most efficient derivative. Multi-point immobilization on agarose led to an extraordinary thermal stability (half-lives 3604 and 164-fold higher than the free enzyme, at 50° and 35 °C, respectively). Even for chitosan activated with glutaraldehyde, a low-cost support, thermal stability of the immobilized enzyme was 326 and 12-fold higher than the free enzyme at 50° and 35°C, respectively. Immobilized enzymes showed no release of any subunit for the agarose-glyoxyl derivative, and only a few ones for the support activated with glutaraldehyde. Most remarkably, the enzyme kinetic behavior after immobilization increased up to 4-fold in relation to the free one. β-xylosidase, a tetrameric enzyme with four identical subunits, exists in equilibrium between the monomeric and oligomeric forms in solution. Depending on the pH of immobilization, the enzyme oligomerization can be favored, thus explaining the hyperactivation phenomenon. Both glyoxyl-agarose and chitosan-glutaraldehyde derivatives were used to catalyze corncob xylan hydrolysis, reaching 72 % conversion, representing a xylose productivity of around 20 g L^-1 h^-1. After ten 4h-cycles (pH 6.0, 35 °C), the xylan-to-xylose conversion remained approximately unchanged. Therefore, the immobilized β-xylosidases prepared in this work can be of great interest as biocatalysts in a biorefinery context.