南海沉积物细菌胞外蛋白酶在家族水平上的多样性

海洋产蛋白酶细菌及其分泌的胞外蛋白酶在降解有机氮以推动海洋氮循环进行方面发挥着重要作用，但目前对这二者多样性的认识非常有限。本研究自南海沉积物中筛选得到90株产蛋白酶细菌，并通过N-端氨基酸序列，分析了其胞外蛋白酶在家族水平上的多样性。16S rRNA基因序列分析的结果表明，筛选的产蛋白酶细菌均属于Gammaproteobacteria纲，且大多数属于Alteromonadales目和Vibrionales目的不同属。对其中14株菌株的14个胞外蛋白酶的N-端氨基酸序列分析表明，所有这些蛋白酶属于金属蛋白酶的M4家族或丝氨酸蛋白酶的S8家族。本研究提供了海洋沉积物产蛋白酶细菌在类群及其胞外蛋白酶在类型上的新细节，这将有助于全面了解微生物酶促降解海洋沉积物有机氮的过程和机理。

Family-level diversity of extracellular proteases of sedimentary bacteria from the South China Sea

Protease-producing bacteria and their extracellular proteases are key players in degrading organic nitrogen to drive marine nitrogen cycling and yet knowledge on both of them is still very limited. This study screened protease-producing bacteria from the South China Sea sediments and analyzed the diversity of their extracellular proteases at the family level through N-terminal amino acid sequencing. Results of the 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis showed that all screened protease-producing bacteria belonged to the class Gammaproteobacteria and most of them were affiliated with different genera within the orders Alteromonadales and Vibrionales. The N-terminal amino acid sequence analysis for fourteen extracellular proteases from fourteen screened bacterial strains revealed that all these proteases belonged to the M4 family of metalloproteases or the S8 family of serine proteases. This study presents new details on taxa of marine sedimentary protease-producing bacteria and types of their extracellular proteases, which will help to comprehensively understand the process and mechanism of the microbial enzymatic degradation of marine sedimentary organic nitrogen.