Esterases receive special attention because their wide distribution in biological systems and environments and their importance for physiology and chemical synthesis. The prediction of esterases substrate promiscuity level from sequence data and the molecular reasons why certain such enzymes are more promiscuous than others, remain to be elucidated. This limits the surveillance of the sequence space for esterases potentially leading to new versatile biocatalysts and new insights into their role in cellular function. Here we performed an extensive analysis of the substrate spectra of 145 phylogenetically and environmentally diverse microbial esterases, when tested with 96 diverse esters. We determined the primary factors shaping their substrate range by analyzing substrate range patterns in combination with structural analysis and protein-ligand simulations. We found a structural parameter that helps ranking (classifying) promiscuity level of esterases from sequence data at 94% accuracy. This parameter, the active site effective volume, exemplifies the topology of the catalytic environment by measuring the active site cavity volume corrected by the relative solvent accessible surface area (SASA) of the catalytic triad. Sequences encoding esterases with active site effective volumes (cavity volume/SASA) above a threshold show greater substrate spectra, which can be further extended in combination with phylogenetic data. This measure provides also a valuable tool for interrogating substrates capable of being converted. This measure, found to be transferred to phosphatases of the haloalkanoic acid dehalogenase superfamily and possibly other enzymatic systems, represents a powerful tool for low-cost bioprospecting for esterases with broad substrate ranges, in large scale sequence datasets.
        
Title: An enzyme from Auricularia auricula-judae combining both benzoyl and cinnamoyl esterase activity Haase-Aschoff P, Linke D, Nimtz M, Popper L, Berger RG Ref: Process Biochemistry, 48:1872, 2013 : PubMed
Benzoic acid esterases and ferulic acid esterases (FAE) are enzymes with different profiles of substrate specificity. An extracellular esterase (EstBC) from culture supernatants of the edible basidiomycete fungus Auricularia auricula-judae was purified by anion exchange chromatography, followed by preparative isoelectric focusing and hydrophobic interaction chromatography. EstBC showed a molecular mass of 36 kDa and an isoelectric point of 3.2 along with broad pH and temperature windows similar to fungal FAEs. However, EstBC exhibited also characteristics of a benzoic acid esterase acting on both benzoates and cinnamates, and most efficiently on methyl and ethyl benzoate, methyl 3-hydroxybenzoate and methyl salicylate. Feruloyl saccharides as well as lipase substrates, such as long chain fatty acids esterified with glycerol, polyethoxylated sorbitan and p-nitrophenol were not hydrolyzed. Protein database analyses with tryptic peptides of EstBC solely yielded hits regarding hypothetical proteins belonging to the alpha/beta hydrolase family. The uncommon substrate specificity of EstBC concomitant with a lack of sequence homology to known enzymes suggests a new type of enzyme.