Agar is a polysaccharide polymer material, generally extracted from seaweed. Most agar degradation strains were isolated from seawater. In order to find new species resources and novel agarase from soil, an agar-degrading bacterium Paenibacillus sp. SSG-1 was isolated from soil. Agarase SSG-1a was purified to homogeneity by 30.2 fold with a yield of 4.8% through ammonium sulfate precipitation, DEAE FF chromatography and native-PAGE separation. The tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) results indicated that purified SSG-1a should be a novel beta-agarase. The molecular mass of SSG-1a was estimated to be 77 kDa. The optimal temperature and pH for SSG-1a were 50 degrees C and pH 6.0, respectively. Moreover, SSG-1a was stable in pH range of 4.0-10.0 and at temperature up to 40 C. It could hydrolyze the beta-1,4 linkage of agarose to produce neoagarohexaose (95 mol%) and neoagarooctaose (5 mol%). Metal ion Mn2+ and reducing reagents (beta-Me and DTT) could increase its activity by 150% and 60%, respectively. (C) 2014, The Society for Biotechnology, Japan. All rights reserved.