Engineering of a bacterial tyrosinase for improved catalytic efficiency towards D-tyrosine using random and site directed mutagenesis approaches

The tyrosinase gene from Ralstonia solanacearum (GenBank NP518458) was subjected to random mutagenesis resulting in tyrosinase variants (RVC10 and RV145) with up to 3.2-fold improvement in kcat, 5.2-fold lower Km and 16-fold improvement in catalytic efficiency for D-tyrosine. Based on RVC10 and RV145 mutated sequences, single mutation variants were generated with all variants showing increased kcat for D-tyrosine compared to the wild type (WT). All single mutation variants based on RV145 had a higher kcat and Km value compared to the RV145 and thus the combination of four mutations in RV145 was antagonistic for turnover, but synergistic for affinity of the enzyme for D-tyrosine. Single muta…