Cloning and expression of a hypothetical Loosenin from Neurospora crassa

Resumen

Loosenin is a protein recently described which presents amorphogenic activity on cellulose. It was isolated from the Basidiomycete Bjerkandera adusta and it enhances sugar release from cellulosic fibers treated previously with it and then subjected to cellulase treatment. It can also bind to other polysaccharides like chitin and xylans but presents no hydrolytic activity itself. Blast analysis using the loosenin amino acid sequence retrieved a sequence from the Neurospora crassa genome that showed 59% similarity. In this work, we cloned, expressed and partially characterized a putative loosenin from N. crassa, since these proteins have a potential for pretreatment of lignocellulosic materials.