A novel protease gene, cpls8, was cloned from the newly isolated bacterium and successfully expressed in Escherchia coli.

The heterologously expressed CPLS8 exhibited optimal activity at pH 10.0 and demonstrated an increasing activity at temperatures between 5 and 35 °C with a complete inactivation at 55 °C.

Compared with other cold-adapted proteases, the CPLS8 was more resistant to the detergent of SDS, which can keep more than 80% of the highest activity in the presence of SDS (1.0%), even the concentration of SDS is 3.0%, more than 19% of its initial activity was still retained.

CPLS8 was a novel cold-adapted protease and seemed to be attractive for industrial application.