Cloning and extracellular expression of a raw starch digesting α-amylase (Blamy-I) and its application in bioethanol production from a non-conventional source of starch.

The aim of this study was to clone and efficiently express a raw starch-digesting α-amylase enzyme in the culture media and also to investigate the potential application of this recombinant enzyme in the digestion of non-conventional raw starch for bioethanol production. A raw starch digesting α-amylase gene isolated from Bacillus licheniformis strain AS08E was cloned and extracellularly expressed in E. coli cells using the native signal peptide. The mature recombinant α-amylase (Blamy-I) consisting of 483 amino acid residues was found to be homogenous with a mass of 55.3 kDa (by SDS-PAGE analysis) and a predicted pI of 6.05. Structural and functional analysis of Blamy-I revealed the presence of an extra Ca(2+) -binding region between the A and C domains responsible for higher thermostability of this enzyme. The statistical optimization of E. coli culture conditions resulted in an approximately eightfold increase in extracellular expression of Blamy-I as compared to its production under non-optimized conditions. Blamy-I demonstrated optimum enzyme activity at 80 °C and pH 10.0, and efficiently hydrolyzed raw starch isolated from a non-conventional, underutilized jack fruit seeds. Further utilization of this starch for bioethanol production using Blamy-I and Saccharomyces cerevisiae also proved to be highly promising.