Glucoamylase Research: An Overview

Abstract

This paper reviews the main features of glucoamylase research describing essentially more recent developments on microorganisms, production and properties of glucoamylases. It is an important industrial enzyme and is widely used in starch saccharification, brewing and distilling industry. Glucoamylase can be derived from a wide variety of sources including plants, animals and microorganisms. Most of the production techniques essentially, however, are based on microbial sources. It is an extracellular enzyme and has got second place (next to proteases) in world's distribution and sales among industrial enzymes. Most of the production of glucoamylase is carried out using liquid fermentation process. Technique of solid state fermentation, however, have also been employed for its production and recently this technique is gaining renewed interest from researchers for its production. The paper also describes aspects related with the purification and characterization of glucoamylase enzyme.

Kinetic and Thermodynamic Characterization of Glucoamylase from Colletotrichum sp. KCP1

“…Filamentous fungi however constitute major source among all microorganisms. Microbial strains of genus Aspergillus and Rhizopus are mainly used for commercial production of glucoamylase [2]. The preferences for glucoamylase from these sources in starch processing industries are due to their good thermostability and high activity at neutral pH [2,3].…”

Thermostable Glycoside Hydrolases in Biorefinery Technologies

“…The liquefaction step is followed by saccharification, involving further hydrolysis of the produced maltodextrins into either maltose syrup by β-amylase or glucose/glucose syrups by glucoamylase (γ-amylase) [57]. Also this step is run at high temperature (avoiding costs of cooling as well as viscosity problems).…”

Biochemical characterization of a glucoamylase from Saccharomycopsis fibuligera R64

“…Therefore, the enzyme is widely employed in the food and fermentation industries, primarily in the production of glucose syrup that uses starch as the starting material (Pandey 1995).…”

“…Glucoamylase can be found in various organisms, including yeast (Pandey 1995). The food borne yeast Saccharomycopsis fibuligera (Sacfi) was shown to demonstrate high amylolytic activities, which cover α-and gluco-amylases (Gonzalez et al 2008).…”