Hide depilation and feather disintegration studies with keratinolytic serine protease from a novel Bacillus subtilis isolate

Abstract

Keratinases play an important role in biotechnological applications such as improvement of feather meal, enzymatic dehairing and production of amino acids or peptides from high molecular weight substrates. Bacillus subtilis P13, isolated from Vajreshwari hot spring (45-50 degrees C) near Mumbai, India, produces a neutral serine protease and has an optimum temperature of 65 degrees C. This enzyme preparation was keratinolytic in nature and could disintegrate whole chicken feathers, except for the remnants of shafts. The enzyme preparation also exhibited depilation of goat hides with the recovery of intact animal hair. The enzyme preparation could release peptides from ground feathers and bring about their weight reduction; however, similar action on hair was relatively weak. A single major PMSF-sensitive protease band could be detected upon zymogram analysis, indicating that a single enzyme may be responsible for feather degradation and hide depilation. The importance of these findings in the biotechnological application for feather and leather industries is discussed.

The Bioengineering and Industrial Applications of Bacterial Alkaline Proteases: the Case of SAPB and KERAB

“…These include those reported by Gupta et al, (1999) and Haddar et al, (2009). Bleach stability was also attained through protein engineering (Pillai and Archana, 2008;Radha and Gunasekaran, 2008). These findings suggest the potential strong candidacy of SAPB and KERAB for application as cleaning additives in detergent formulations to facilitate the release of proteinacious materials in tough stains caused by blood, chocolate, grime, milk, etc.…”

Degradation of intact chicken feathers by Thermoactinomyces sp. CDF and characterization of its keratinolytic protease

“…Moreover, because the β-sheet structure of amyloid prion proteins (PrP Sc ) is very similar to that of β-keratin in feathers, feather-degrading microorganisms and keratinases are recognized as potential degraders of the causative agents of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (Langeveld et al 2003;Suzuki et al 2006;Yoshioka et al 2007). Other potential applications of keratinolytic microorganisms and keratinases include leather processing (Pillai and Archana 2008), the production of biodegradable films and keratin composites (Barone et al 2005), increasing ungual drug delivery (Mohorcic et al 2007), and biohydrogen generation from keratin-rich wastes (Bálint et al 2005;Brandelli et al 2010).…”

Hide unhairing and characterization of commercial enzymes used in leather manufacture

“…It can, therefore, be suggested that the commercial enzymes tested in this work presented some capability to digest the soft α-keratin. Pillai and Archana (2008) reported that an enzymatic preparation from Bacillus subtilis was ineffective in the hydrolysis of native α-keratin, while under similar conditions, the feather β-keratins were nearly completely degraded.…”