Previously, from the human intestinal flora we isolated the bacterial strain Bacteroides uniformis ZL1, which could convert secoisolariciresinol diglucoside (SDG) to its aglycone secoisolariciresinol (SECO) in vivo. In this study, 24 putative beta-glucosidase genes were screened from the genome of B. uniformis ATCC 8492, which were used as templates to design PCR primers for the target genes in B. uniformis ZL1. Fifteen genes (bgl1-bgl15) were amplified from strain ZL1, and among them we identified bgl8 as the gene encoding the SDG-hydrolyzing beta-glucosidase. We sequenced the bgl8 gene, cloned it into the expression vector and then transformed Escherichia coli to construct the recombinant bacteria that could synthesize the target beta-glucosidase (BuBGL8). We purified and characterized BuBGL8, which showed maximal activity and stability under the culture conditions of pH 6.0 and 30 A degrees C. SDG (2.0 mg/ml) was converted to SECO by both the purified BuBGL8 (0.035 mg/ml) and crude enzyme extract (0.23 mg crude protein/ml) with the efficiency of more than 90 % after 90 min at the reaction conditions. This is, to our knowledge, the first report of using recombinant bacteria to synthesize the SDG-hydrolyzing beta-glucosidase, which could be used to produce SECO from SDG conveniently and highly efficiently.