In the present investigation, we have modified a Wt (wild type) lipase
gene (JkP01) by error prone PCR, which was initially cloned from
metagenomic DNA, extracted and purified from hot spring (Sharma et
al., 2007). Our results on Wt lipase demonstrated that enzyme was
stable up to 50 °C, and its activity declined sharply at 60 °C
(t1/2 ~ 5 min) (Sharma et al., 2011). Attempts were therefore made
to generate a thermostable mutant lipase using Wt gene, by error
prone PCR. A mutagenic library was constructed and screened, functional
screening of the library resulted in a mutant lipase (lip M1),
with mutation N355K in the mature polypeptide. The lip M1 demonstrated
144 folds enhanced thermostability over the Wt enzyme,
when assayed at 60 °C. Both enzymes (lip M1 and Wt) were characterized
in detail using biochemical, biophysical and computational
approaches.