Cellular Response and Molecular Mechanism of Glyphosate Degradation by Chryseobacterium sp. Y16C

Glyphosate is one of the most widely used herbicides worldwide. Unfortunately, the continuous use of glyphosate has resulted in serious environmental contamination and raised public concern about its impact on human health. In our previous study, Chryseobacterium sp. Y16C was isolated and characterized as an efficient degrader that can completely degrade glyphosate. However, the biochemical and molecular mechanisms underlying its glyphosate biodegradation ability remain unclear. In this study, the physiological response of Y16C to glyphosate stimulation was characterized at the cellular level. The results indicated that, in the process of glyphosate degradation, Y16C induced a series of physiological responses in the membrane potential, reactive oxygen species levels, and apoptosis. The antioxidant system of Y16C was activated to alleviate the oxidative damage caused by glyphosate. Furthermore, a novel gene, goW, was expressed in response to glyphosate. The gene product, GOW, is an enzyme that catalyzes glyphosate degradation, with putative structural similarities to glycine oxidase. GOW encodes 508 amino acids, with an isoelectric point of 5.33 and a molecular weight of 57.2 kDa, which indicates that it is a glycine oxidase. GOW displays maximum enzyme activity at 30 °C and pH 7.0. Additionally, most of the metal ions exhibited little influence on the enzyme activity except for Cu²⁺. Finally, with glyphosate as the substrate, the catalytic efficiency of GOW was higher than that of glycine, although opposite results were observed for the affinity. Taken together, the current study provides new insights to deeply understand and reveal the mechanisms of glyphosate degradation in bacteria.