Isolation and Characterization of Engineered Nucleoside Deoxyribosyltransferase with Enhanced Activity Toward 2’-Fluoro-2’-Deoxynucleoside

Nucleoside deoxyribosyltransferase (NDT) is an enzyme that replaces the purine or pyrimidine base of 2′-deoxyribonucleoside. This enzyme is generally used in the nucleotide salvage pathway in vivo and synthesizes many nucleoside analogs in vitro for various biotechnological purposes. Since NDT is known to exhibit relatively low reactivity toward nucleoside analogs such as 2’-fluoro-2’-deoxynucleoside, it is necessary to develop an enhanced NDT mutant enzyme suitable for nucleoside analogs. In this study, molecular evolution strategy via error-prone PCR was performed with ndt gene derived from Lactobacillus leichmannii as a template to obtain an engineered NDT with higher substrate specificity to 2FDU (2′-fluoro-2′-deoxyuridine). A mutant library of 214 ndt genes with different sequences was obtained and performed for the conversion of 2FDU to 2FDA (2′-fluoro-2′-deoxyadenosine). The E. coli containing a mutant NDT, named NDT^L59Q, showed 1.7-fold (at 40°C) and 4.4-fold (at 50°C) higher 2FDU-to-2FDA conversions compared to the NDT^WT, respectively. Subsequently, both NDT^WT and NDT^L59Q enzymes were over-expressed and purified using a His-tag system in E. coli. Characterization and enzyme kinetics revealed that the NDT^L59Q mutant enzyme containing a single point mutation of leucine to glutamine at the 59^th position exhibited superior thermal stability with enhanced substrate specificity to 2FDU.