applied sciences Article A Novel Sucrose Isomerase Producing Isomaltulose from Raoultella terrigena Li Liu 1,2,3, Shuhuai Yu 1,2,3,* and Wei Zhao 1,2,3,* 1 State Key Laboratory of Food Science and Technology, School of Food Science and Technology, Jiangnan University, 1800 Lihu Avenue, Wuxi 214122, China;
[email protected] 2 National Engineering Research Center for Functional Food, Jiangnan University, 1800 Lihu Avenue, Wuxi 214122, China 3 Collaborative Innovation Center of Food Safety and Quality Control in Jiangsu Province, Jiangnan University, 1800 Lihu Avenue, Wuxi 214122, China * Correspondence:
[email protected] (S.Y.);
[email protected] (W.Z.); Tel./Fax: +86-0510-8591-91-50 (W.Z.) Abstract: Isomaltulose is widely used in the food industry as a substitute for sucrose owing to its good processing characteristics and physicochemical properties, which is usually synthesized by sucrose isomerase (SIase) with sucrose as substrate. In this study, a gene pal-2 from Raoultella terrigena was predicted to produce SIase, which was subcloned into pET-28a (+) and transformed to the E. coli system. The purified recombinant SIase Pal-2 was characterized in detail. The enzyme is a monomeric protein with a molecular weight of approximately 70 kDa, showing an optimal temperature of 40 ◦C and optimal pH value of 5.5. The Michaelis constant (Km) and maximum reaction rate (Vmax) are 62.9 mmol/L and 286.4 U/mg, respectively. The conversion rate of isomaltulose reached the maximum of 81.7% after 6 h with 400 g/L sucrose as the substrate and 25 U/mg sucrose of SIase.