Carboxypeptidases and nucleic acids encoding the same

An isolated polypeptide having carboxypeptidase activity with (i) an optimal activity with respect to pH in the range of about pH 4.0 to about pH 5.0 at 25° C.;

• (ii) an optimal activity with respect to temperature in the range of about 55° C. to about 60° C. at pH 4;
• (iii) a residual activity of at least about 65.5% after 30 minutes at pH 4.0 and 60° C.;
• and (iv) an ability to hydrolyze X from N-CBZ-Ala-X wherein N-CBZ is N-carbobenzoxy and X is any amino acid, wherein the polypeptide is selected from the group consisting of:
• (a) a polypeptide having an amino acid sequence which has at least 95% identity with amino acids 19 to 555 of SEQ ID NO:2;
• (b) a polypeptide which is encoded by a nucleic acid sequence which hybridizes under medium stringency conditions with (i) nucleotides 55 to 1662 of SEQ ID NO:1, (ii) its complementary strand, or (iii) a subsequence thereof, wherein medium stringency conditions are defined as prehybridization and hybridization a 42° C. in 5×SSPE, 0.3% SDS, 200 mg/ml sheared and denatured salmon sperm DNA, and 35% formamide;
• (c) an allelic variant of (a) or (b);
• and
• (d) a fragment of (a), (A), or (c), wherein the fragment has carboxypeptidase activity.