Release of intracellular enzymes increases the total extracellular activities of carbohydrate-processing enzymes in marine environment

Abstract

Microbial extracellular enzymatic activities (EEAs) produced by microbes to degrade biopolymers are the ‘gatekeeper’ of carbon cycle in the marine ecosystem. It is usually assumed that these extracellular enzymes are actively secreted by microbes. But biopolymers degrading enzymes also exist in the intracellular space. Cell lysis will passively release these enzymes into the environments and contribute to the total EEAs. However, to what extent the cell lysis can contribute to the total EEAs are still unclear. Here, using extreme cell lysis method, we evaluated the maximum contribution of cell lysis to total EEAs in culturable marine bacteria and coastal seawater. For carbohydrate processing enzymes (β-glucosidase, alginate lyase and chitinase), the release of intracellular enzymes could contribute positively (up to 56.1% increase for β-glucosidase in seawater) to the total EEAs. For protease and leucine aminopeptidase, the cell lysis did not increase and even decreased the total EEAs. For alkaline phosphatase, the intracellular enzymes generally had no contribution to the total EEAs. These results showed that passively released intracellular enzymes could substantially increase the total extracellular activities of carbohydrate processing enzymes, which should be considered in building the link between the EEAs and organic carbon cycle in the ocean.