The genes of family 3 beta -glucosidase enzymes consist of five distinct re
gions; the N-terminal residues, an N-terminal catalytic domain, a nonhomolo
gous region, a C-terminal domain of unknown function and the C-terminal res
idues. The beta -glucosidase genes derived from Cellvibrio gilvus (CG) and
Agrobacterium tumefaciens (AT) have been subjected to gene deletion, trunca
tion and shuffling. The folding information was found to be distributed une
venly across the different regions based on the gene manipulation results.
Chimeric enzymes with improved enzyme characteristics were obtained only by
gene shuffling at the C-terminal domain. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. Al
l rights reserved.