Laccases are multicopper oxidases (MCOs) with a broad application spectrum, particularly in second-generation ethanol biotechnology and the bioremediation of xenobiotics and other highly recalcitrant compounds. Synthetic pesticides are xenobiotics with long environmental persistence, and the search for their effective bioremediation has mobilized the scientific community. Antibiotics, in turn, can pose severe risks for the emergence of multidrug-resistant microorganisms, as their frequent use for medical and veterinary purposes can generate constant selective pressure on the microbiota of urban and agricultural effluents. In the search for more efficient industrial processes, some bacterial laccases stand out for their tolerance to extreme physicochemical conditions and their fast generation cycles. Accordingly, to expand the range of effective approaches for the bioremediation of environmentally important compounds, the prospection of bacterial laccases was carried out from a custom genomic database. The best hit found in the genome of Chitinophaga sp. CB10, a Bacteroidetes isolate obtained from a biomass-degrading bacterial consortium, was subjected to in silico prediction, molecular docking, and molecular dynamics simulation analyses. The putative laccase CB10_180.4889 (Lac_CB10), composed of 728 amino acids, with theoretical molecular mass values of approximately 84 kDa and a pI of 6.51, was predicted to be a new CopA with three cupredoxin domains and four conserved motifs linking MCOs to copper sites that assist in catalytic reactions. Molecular docking studies revealed that Lac_CB10 had a high affinity for the molecules evaluated, and the affinity profiles with multiple catalytic pockets predicted the following order of decreasing thermodynamically favorable values: tetracycline (-8 kcal/mol) > ABTS (-6.9 kcal/mol) > sulfisoxazole (-6.7 kcal/mol) > benzidine (-6.4 kcal/mol) > trimethoprim (-6.1 kcal/mol) > 2,4-dichlorophenol (-5.9 kcal/mol) mol. Finally, the molecular dynamics analysis suggests that Lac_CB10 is more likely to be effective against sulfisoxazole-like compounds, as the sulfisoxazole-Lac_CB10 complex exhibited RMSD values lower than 0.2 nm, and sulfisoxazole remained bound to the binding site for the entire 100 ns evaluation period. These findings corroborate that LacCB10 has a high potential for the bioremediation of this molecule.
Keywords: bioremediation of synthetic molecules; laccases; molecular docking simulation.