Marine enzymes with halophilic, thermophilic and psychrophilic properties hold great application potential, but remain largely underexplored due to a relatively short research history and previously limited accessibility. In the present synthetic biology era, the marine enzymes with extreme characteristics and sequence novelty are often industrially relevant and hence highly demanded. In the past one decade, we discovered and investigated a number of marine cytochrome P450 peroxygenases with unique fatty acid decarboxylation activities. Recently, our in silico bioprospecting of the Global Ocean Microbiome Genome Catalogue (GOMC) led to the discovery of three novel halophilic/thermophilic enzymes that efficiently degrade polyethylene terephthalate. These results demonstrate that marine enzymes are an arising resource of new synthetic biology parts.

marine enzymes, synthetic biology, cytochrome P450 enzymes, PETase