Identification of new members of alkaliphilic lipases in archaea and metagenome database using reconstruction of ancestral sequences

The application of bioinformatics in lipase research has the potential to discover robust members from different genomic/metagenomic databses. In this study, we explored the diversity and distribution of alkaliphilic lipases in archaea domain and metagenome data sets through phylogenetic survey. Reconstructed ancestral sequence of alkaphilic lipase was used to search the homologous alkaliphilic lipases among the archaea and metagenome public databases. Our investigation revealed a total 21 unique sequences of new alkaliphilic lipases in the archaeal and environmental metagenomic protein databases that shared significant sequence similarity to the bacterial alkaliphilic lipases. Most of the identified new members of alkaliphilic lipases belong to class Haloarchaea. The searched list of homologs also comprised of one characterized lipase from alkalohyperthermophilic Archaeoglobus fulgidus. All the newly identified alkaliphilic lipase members showed conserved pentapeptide [X-His-Ser-X-Gly] motif, a key feature of lipase family. Furthermore, detailed analysis of all these new sequences showed homology either with thermostable or alkalophilic lipases. The reconstructed ancestral sequence-based searches increased the sensitivity and efficacies to detect remotely homologous sequences. We hypothesize that this study can enrich our current knowledge on lipases in designing more potential thermo-alkaliphilic lipases for industrial applications.