A thermostable serralysin inhibitor from marine bacterium Flavobacterium sp. YS-80-122

Serralysin inhibitors have been proposed as potent drugs against many diseases and may help to prevent further development of antibiotic-resistant pathogenic bacteria. In this study, a novel serralysin inhibitor gene, lupI, was cloned from the marine bacterium Flavobacterium sp. YS-80-122 and expressed in Escherichia coli. The deduced serralysin inhibitor, LupI, shows <40% amino acid identity to other reported serralysin inhibitors. Multiple sequence alignment and phylogenetic analysis of LupI with other serralysin inhibitors indicated that LupI was a novel type of serralysin inhibitor. The inhibitory constant for LupI towards its target metalloprotease was 0.64 μmol/L. LupI was thermostable at high temperature, in which 35.6%–90.7% of its inhibitory activity was recovered after treatment at 100°C for 1–60 min followed by incubation at 0°C. This novel inhibitor may represent a candidate drug for the treatment of serralysin-related infections.