Abstract

Lipases play an important role in lipid metabolism and are produced by a variety of species. All lipases are members of the α/β hydrolase fold super-family. Also, lipases share a conserved active site signature, the Gly-Xaa-Ser-Xaa-Gly motif. To obtain an overview of this industrially and very important class of enzymes and their characteristics, we collected and classified bacterial lipases sequences available from protein databases. Here we proposed an updated and revised classification of family I bacterial "true" lipases based mainly on a comparison of their amino acid sequences and some fundamental physicochemical and biological properties. The result of this work has identified 11 subfamilies of “true” lipases. This work will therefore contribute to a faster identification and to an easier characterization and classification of novel bacterial lipolytic enzymes.

Key words: Lipases, phylogenetic analysis, lipolytic enzymes.