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A diverse family of thermostable cytochrome P450s created by recombination of stabilizing fragments

Nature Biotechnology volume 25, pages 1051–1056 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

Thermostable enzymes combine catalytic specificity with the toughness required to withstand industrial reaction conditions1,2. Stabilized enzymes also provide robust starting points for evolutionary improvement of other protein properties3. We recently created a library4 of at least 2,300 new active chimeras of the biotechnologically important5,6,7,8,9 cytochrome P450 enzymes. Here we show that a chimera's thermostability can be predicted from the additive contributions of its sequence fragments. Based on these predictions, we constructed a family of 44 novel thermostable P450s with half-lives of inactivation at 57 °C up to 108 times that of the most stable parent. Although they differ by as many as 99 amino acids from any known P450, the stable sequences are catalytically active. Among the novel functions they exhibit is the ability to produce drug metabolites. This chimeric P450 family provides a unique ensemble for biotechnological applications and for studying sequence-stability-function relationships.

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Figure 1: Thermostabilities of parental and chimeric cytochromes P450 vary widely and are well predicted by an additive model.
Figure 2: Relative chimera thermostabilities and folding status can be predicted from sequence element frequencies in a multiple sequence alignment of folded proteins.

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  • 12 December 2007

    In the print version of this article and the version initially published online, the sentence starting with “The most thermostable 450 P450 chimera” contains an extra “450”. The correct sentence should start as follows “The most thermostable P450 chimera”.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Christopher R. Otey and Marco Landwehr for their assistance. This work was supported in part by National Institutes of Health Grant R01 GM068664-01, Army Research Office Contract DAAD19-03-0004, Eli Lilly & Co. and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute predoctoral fellowship (to J.D.B.).

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Author notes

  1. D Allan Drummond

    Present address: Present address: FAS Center for Systems Biology, Harvard University, 7 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 USA.,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. California Institute of Technology, mail code 210-40, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.,

    Yougen Li, Andrew M Sawayama, Christopher D Snow, Jesse D Bloom & Frances H Arnold

  2. Program in Computation and Neural Systems, California Institute of Technology, mail code 210-40, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.,

    D Allan Drummond

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Contributions

Y.L., A.M.S. and F.H.A. designed the research; Y.L. and A.M.S. performed the research; Y.L., D.A.D., A.M.S., C.D.S. and J.D.B. contributed to the analytical tools; Y.L., D.A.D., A.M.S., C.D.S., J.D.B. and F.H.A. analyzed data; Y.L., D.A.D., A.M.S., C.D.S. and F.H.A. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Frances H Arnold.

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Competing interests

The thermostable P450s described have been licensed for commercialization. Remuneration is already fixed and will not be affected by this paper. F.S.A. is in talks to serve as consultant to licensor.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–6 and Supplementary Tables 1–7 (PDF 148 kb)

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Li, Y., Drummond, D., Sawayama, A. et al. A diverse family of thermostable cytochrome P450s created by recombination of stabilizing fragments. Nat Biotechnol 25, 1051–1056 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt1333

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