Paper accepted: “Endochitinase 1 (Tv-ECH1) from Trichoderma virens has high subsite specificities for acetylated units when acting on chitosans”

Just a few days short of a full year after initial submission, Franziska Bußwinkel’s paper on the heterologous expression of a chitinase gene from the biocontrol fungus Trichoderma virens in the yeast Pichia pastoris and on the detailed characterization of the recombinant enzyme has finally been accepted for publication in the “International Journal of Biological Macromolecules”. Already in a Research Module during her Master studies, Franzi had gone to the Institute of Technology in Tralee in Ireland to learn from Shane O’Connel and Oscar Goni how to use the Pichia expression system, and she brought back the recombinant chitinase as well as the technical knowledge which allowed us to establish the system in our group, too. During her Master thesis, she then performed the first in depth analysis of the subsite specificities in a fungal chitinase using the quantitative mass spectrometric sequencing technique for chitosan oligosaccharides developed by Stefan Cord-Landwehr. The enzyme proved to have an unusual high preference for acetylated residues close to the cleavage side, making us an interesting tool for the production of specific chitosan oligomers, and for developing fingerprinting analyses of chitosan polymers.