Abstract
Pseudomonas mendocina was identified as a novel endophytic isolate of Murraya koenigii with squalene cyclase activity. The PCR amplification of squalene hopene cyclase (shc) gene from the isolate Pseudomonas mendocina with the primers PA1/PA2 showed a band at 1980 bp specific for the enzyme squalene hopene cyclase. The in silico translation of the squalene hopene cyclase gene showed 96% sequence similarity with squalene hopene cyclase of Pseudomonas agarici (WP-060782422). Docking studies of the template and the modeled protein with the ligand squalene showed that the main interacting residues were Asp376 and Asp377. Squalene hopene cyclase template 1 sqc.1A sequence from Alicyclobacillus acidocaldaruis was used as the template for docking experiments. The gene coding for squalene hopene cyclase from Pseudomonas mendocina has been cloned in pET-28a vector to produce recombinant vector and was expressed in E.coli BL21 (DE3) expression system. Squalene hopene cyclase enzyme was isolated, purified and the molecular weight was confirmed by SDS-PAGE as 75 KDa.