Isolation of putative chitinase II gene fragment from Serratia plymuthica strain UBCR_12

Chitinase is mostly investigated in Serratia marcescens, but not in S. plymuthica. In order to detail investigated chitinase from S. plymuthica, a putative chitinase II fragment has been successfully isolated from S. plymuthica strain UBCR_12. Isolation was performed by PCR-based cloning strategy by applying a pair of primer, specifically designed to amplify chitinase II fragment. BLAST result showed that the cloned fragment has 93% similarity to chitinase of S. plymuthica strain 3Re4-18 (CP012097) and others. Cluster analysis showed that the putative chitinase sequence has very close related to chitinase A (ChiA). Furthermore, domain analysis showed that the putative chitinase has only one domain, GH18_chitinase, as catalytic domain resembles high similarity to the ChiA domains. Based on its 3D-modeling structure analysis we assumed that the cloned chitinase fragment belongs to the subfamily of Chi indicating the similar function to SpChiD.