A novel cold-adapted lipase (designated as LipYY31) was obtained from a psychrotrophic Pseudomonas sp. YY31. The strain YY31 was gram-negative, rod shaped, motile by means of one polar flagellum, and exhibited chemotaxis toward oil droplets under a microscope. The strain displayed remarkable degradation of edible oil and fat even at 5 A degrees C. The LipYY31 DNA fragment contains an open reading frame of 1,410 bp which encoded a protein of 470 amino acids with an estimated molecular mass of 49,584 Da. LipYY31 showed high sequence similarity to those of subfamily I (TM).3 lipase and had a conserved GXSXG motif around the catalytic Ser residue. Its optimal temperature was 25-30 A degrees C, and it retained 20-40 % of its activity at 0-5 A degrees C. The optimal pH value was 8.0. The activity was strongly inhibited by Cd2+, Zn2+, EDTA and was highly dependent on Ca2+. Tricaprin and p-nitrophenyl caprate were the most favorable substrates among the triglycerides and p-nitrophenyl esters, respectively. LipYY31 also had high activity towards natural substrates including edible vegetable oils and animal fat. Furthermore, LipYY31 was very active and stable in the presence of several detergents and organic solvents. In particular, the lipase exhibited high stability against organic solvents such as methanol, ethanol, and isopropanol.