Cloning of collagenase II gene from Clostridium histolyticum

What is collagenase?

Collagenase is a protease which specifically digests collagens. Collagen is an important constituent in connective tissues. Therefore, the collagenase from this bacterium is a pathogetic factor.

This enzyme is widely used by biotechnology researchers to digest collagens and also to cleave specific sites in engineered proteins (fusion proteins). Thus, the protein engineering of this collagenase itself should make this protease more useful in biotechnology.

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What we have done

• Cloning of the collagenase II gene

What we are going to do

• Construction of a fusion of collagenase II and maltose binding protein

• Development of utilization system of the fusion protein in biochemical engineering

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