SurfinUSA

In coastal environments, algal biomass is mainly composed of polysaccharides that are degraded by microbes that have a major impact on the oceanic carbon cycle. Marine bacteria from the Bacteroidota phylum possess dedicated Polysaccharide Utilization Loci (PULs), which encode a suite of proteins necessary for sensing, binding, transporting, and degrading specific marine glycans. Although the catabolic enzymes of many PULs have been characterized, knowledge is still scarce on surface glycan binding proteins (SGBPs) that initiate substrate recognition and utilization. By combining biochemical, structural, genetics and physiology approaches on the model marine bacterium Zobellia galactanivorans, we will characterize the biological role and molecular interactions of two SGBPs from a PUL targeting alginate, the most abundant glycan from brown algae.