**Benwei Zhu †,\*, Fu Hu †, Heng Yuan, Yun Sun and Zhong Yao \***

College of Food Science and Light Industry, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 211816, China; hufu@njtech.edu.cn (F.H.); yuanheng17@njtech.edu.cn (H.Y.); sunyun\_food@njtech.edu.cn (Y.S.)

**\*** Correspondence: zhubenwei@njtech.edu.cn (B.Z.); yaozhong@njtech.edu.cn (Z.Y.);

Tel.: +86-25-5813-9419 (B.Z.)

† These authors contributed equally to this work.

Received: 28 March 2018; Accepted: 12 April 2018; Published: 15 April 2018

**Abstract:** Enzymatic preparation of alginate oligosaccharides with versatile bioactivities by alginate lyases has attracted increasing attention due to its featured characteristics, such as wild condition and specific products. In this study, AlgNJ-07, a novel polyM-specific alginate lyase with high specific activity and pH stability, has been purified from the newly isolated marine bacterium *Serratia marcescens* NJ-07. It has a molecular weight of approximately 25 kDa and exhibits the maximal activity of 2742.5 U/mg towards sodium alginate under 40 ◦C at pH 9.0. Additionally, AlgNJ-07 could retain more than 95% of its activity at pH range of 8.0–10.0, indicating it possesses excellent pH-stability. Moreover, it shows high activity and affinity towards polyM block and no activity to polyG block, which suggests that it is a strict polyM-specific alginate lyase. The degradation pattern of AlgNJ-07 has also been explored. The activity of AlgNJ-07 could be activated by NaCl with a low concentration (100–300 mM). It can be observed that AlgNJ-07 can recognize the trisaccharide as the minimal substrate and hydrolyze the trisaccharide into monosaccharide and disaccharide. The TLC and ESI-MS analysis indicate that it can hydrolyze substrates in a unique endolytic manner, producing not only oligosaccharides with Dp of 2–5 but also a large fraction of monosaccharide. Therefore, it may be a potent tool to produce alginate oligosaccharides with lower Dps (degree of polymerization).

**Keywords:** *Serratia marcescens*; polyM-specific; alginate lyase; oligosaccharides
