The stability of a biocatalyst is an important factor in industrial
applications. Cyclodextrin glucanotransferases are available
from both mesophiles and extremophiles (Table 1) allowing
selection of a CGTase with an appropriate thermostability.
Highly stable CGTases, however, display greater hydrolytic
activity on starch than their less stable counterparts (Kelly et
al. 2009b). This may result in lower CD yields as hydrolytic
products stimulate the degradation of CDs in the coupling
reaction. The stability of enzymes with otherwise beneficial
properties can be enhanced via protein engineering (Eijsink
et al. 2004), but there is only one report were mutagenesis
was used to improve the temperature stability of a CGTase.
The stability of Bacillus circulans 251 CGTase was raised by
engineering a salt bridge on the surface of the B-domain
(Leemhuis et al. 2004a). Other site-directed mutagenesis and
directed evolution studies have revealed that engineering of
CGTases for reaction specificity, generally, delivers variants
with reduced thermostability (Kelly et al. 2008a).
The alternative approach is to engineer existing highly
stable CGTases towards the desired reaction specificity. The
highly thermostable, but highly hydrolytic, Thermoanaerobacterium
thermosulfurigenes EM1 CGTase forms large
amounts of short oligosaccharides and degrades CDs in the
later phases of starch conversion via the coupling reaction.
Using directed evolution, a variant of this CGTase (mutant
S77P) was engineered that formed almost no hydrolytic
products while maintaining native CD forming activity and
stability (Kelly et al. 2008b). Moreover, the coupling
activity of this mutant was very low with no degradation
of CDs in the later phases of the starch conversion.