Structure elucidation of beta-mannanase: from the electron-density map to the DNA sequence.

The crystal structure of affinity-purified Thermomonospora fusca beta-mannanase has been solved despite the lack of the major part of the amino-acid sequence. A high-quality electron-density map allowed the identification of a stretch of eight amino acids close to the C-terminus which was used to design a degenerate downstream PCR primer. Together with a specific primer previously derived from the N-terminus, 95.