Novel Enzymes From the Red Sea Brine Pools: Current State and Potential

Abstract

The Red Sea is a marine environment with unique chemical characteristics and physical topographies. Among the various habitats offered by the Red Sea, the deep-sea brine pools are the most extreme in terms of salinity, temperature and metal contents. Nonetheless, the brine pools host rich polyextremophilic bacterial and archaeal communities. These microbial communities are promising sources for various classes of enzymes adapted to harsh environments - extremozymes. Extremozymes are emerging as novel biocatalysts for biotechnological applications due to their ability to perform catalytic reactions under harsh biophysical conditions, such as those used in many industrial processes. In this review, we provide an overview of the extremozymes from different Red Sea brine pools and discuss the overall biotechnological potential of the Red Sea proteome.

Keywords: Red Sea; biocatalysis; brine pools; extremophile; extremozymes.

FIGURE 1

Location of the deeps along the Red Sea rift axis. The topographic depression is segmented by its geotectonic classification, (Bonatti, 1985) and the segments consist of (i) a northern region, (ii) a transitional region, (iii) a multi-deeps region, and (iv) a rift valley region. Deeps are marked in white; brine pools are marked in beige; brine pools from which enzymes were extracted are marked in red. The geotectonic classification of Red Sea segments (gray dotted lines) is adapted from Bonatti (1985). The map was created by Ute Langner, Red Sea Research Center KAUST.

FIGURE 2

Surface representation of the extremozymes from the Red Sea brine pools. Surface colors indicate positive and negative electrostatic potentials contoured from 50 kT/e (blue) to –50 kT/e (red). The Phyre2 tool (Kelley et al., 2015) was used for homology modeling, with an average 100% confidence level at >90% accuracy. Visualized by PyMOL Molecular Graphics System, Version 2.4.2, Schrödinger, LLC.