Comprehensive sequence and structure analysis of algal lipid catabolic enzyme Triacylglycerol lipase: an in silico study to vitalize the development of optimum engineered strains with high lipid productivity

Abstract

Microalgae as an alternative renewable resource for biofuel production have captured much significance. Nonetheless, its economic viability is a field of major concern for researchers. Unraveling the lipid catabolic pathway and gaining insights into the sequence-structural features of its primary functioning enzyme, Triacylglycerol lipase, will impart valuable information to target microalgae for augmented lipid content. In the present study, a genome-wide comparative study on putative Triacylglycerol lipase (TAGL) enzyme from algal species belonging to varied phylogenetic lineages was performed. The comprehensive sequence analysis revealed that TAGL comprises of three distinct conserved domains, such as, Patatin, Class III Lipase, and Abhydro_lipase, and also confirmed the ubiquitous presence of GXSXG motif in the sequences analyzed. In the absence of a crystal structure of algal TAGL till date, we developed the first 3D model of patatin domain of TAGL from an oleaginous microalga, Phaedactylum tricornutum, employing homology modeling, docking and molecular dynamic simulations methods. The domain-substrate complex having the low-ranking docking score revealed the binding of palmitic acid to the TAGL patatin domain surface with strong hydrogen bond interactions. The simulation results implied that the substrate-complexed patatin domain and the free enzyme adopted a more stable conformation after 40 ns. This is the first ever attempt to provide in-silico insights into the structural and dynamical insights on catalytic mechanism of the TAGL patatin domain. Subsequently, these findings aided our understanding on their structural stability, folding mechanism and protein-substrate interactions, which could be further utilized to design site-specific mutagenic experiments for engineering microalgal strains.

Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

KEYBOARD:

• Microalgae
• biofuel
• lipid productivity
• triacylglycerol lipase
• bioinformatics
• domain analysis

Acknowledgements

SS acknowledges Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India for INSPIRE fellowship. Technical help rendered by Mr. Krishnan Kumar Verma (Associate Scientific Visualizer, KIIT-Technology Business Incubator) in preparation of the figures is gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

Authors declare there is no conflict of interest.

Author’s contribution

Conceptualization: Namrata Misra; Methodology: Susrita Sahoo, Formal analysis and investigation: Susrita Sahoo and Budheswar Dehury; Writing—original draft preparation: Susrita Sahoo and Parminder Kaur Narang; Writing—review and editing: Namrata Misra and Vishakha Raina; Supervision: Mrutyunjay Suar.