Diversity of glycosyl hydrolases from cellulose-depleting communities enriched from casts of two earthworm species.

ABSTRACT: The guts and casts of earthworms contain microbial assemblages that process large amounts of organic polymeric substrates from plant litter and soil; however, the enzymatic potential of these microbial communities remains largely unexplored. In the present work, we retrieved carbohydrate-modifying enzymes through the activity screening of metagenomic fosmid libraries from cellulose-depleting microbial communities established with the fresh casts of two earthworm species, Aporrectodea caliginosa and Lumbricus terrestris, as inocula. Eight glycosyl hydrolases (GHs) from the A. caliginosa-derived community were multidomain endo-beta-glucanases, beta-glucosidases, beta-cellobiohydrolases, beta-galactosidase, and beta-xylosidases of known GH families. In contrast, two GHs derived from the L. te

SUBMITTER: Beloqui A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2935051 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature