Isolation and Screening of Extracellular Protease Enzyme from Fungal Isolates of Soil

Abstract

Protease is an enzyme that conducts proteolysis and receives high attention as the most important enzyme in many industries. The enzymes find applications in waste treatment, bioremediation process, detergents and leather industry. However, the search for microbial sources of novel proteases in natural diversity is a promising area of interest for researchers. In the present research work, protease producing microorganisms were isolated from soil samples collected from three different locations in Petaling Jaya region from soil surface and at depths of 15 cm. The isolated organisms screened for their protease generating abilities by using the skim milk agar experiment. The isolates that gave high positive results in screening identified as Aspergillus sp., Rhizopus sp., Fusarium sp., and Mucor sp. by analyzing the colonies morphology and using lacto-phenol cotton blue (LPCB) staining technique. Among these isolates, Aspergillus sp. 14L3S which isolated from soil surface demonstrated the highest protease activity indicated by the clear zone around the colony which is incubated at room temperature and maintained a pH of about 6.0 for 96 hours. The results showed that among the isolates four fungi had great potential to be used for the production of protease enzymes and upscale for industrial production.

Potential of marine sponge-derived fungi in the aquaculture system

“…The mixture was poured into a solution of 10% (w/v) of skimmed milk powder (Merck, Germany) that heated in a water bath at 50°C. The screening was done by inoculating the fungal disk onto the SMA plate and incubated at 27ºC for 96 h. The hydrolysis zone around the colony indicates protease activity due to the casein hydrolysis process (Kamath et al 2010;Maitig et al 2018). The enzymatic activity was determined by clear zone formation around the fungal disk (Lusi et al 2017).…”

“…The enzymatic activity was determined by clear zone formation around the fungal disk (Lusi et al 2017). The enzymatic index (EI) was measured as a semi-quantitative estimate of the enzyme activities, according to the formula below (Coronado-Ruiz et al 2018;Maitig et al 2018).…”

Potential of fungi isolated from a mangrove ecosystem in Northern Sulawesi, Indonesia: Protease, cellulase and anti-microbial capabilities

“…They are considered as high priority habitats in climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies (Nehren et al 2017;Indarsih and Masruri 2019). Mangrove fungi are known to be rich sources of enzymes and secondary metabolites with various applications such as proteinase, cellulose, and antibacterial compounds (Sari et al 2017;Maitig et al 2018;Sibero et al 2018). Many studies have shown the importance of using mangrove-derived fungi.…”

Purification, Characterization and De-Staining Potentials of a Thermotolerant Protease Produced by Fusarium oxysporum

“…However, the major criteria for proteases selection are based on the pH activity as well as their thermal stability [2,7]. Fungal proteases have been a major important commodity in industrial enzyme production and have been applied hydrolytically on a variety of proteinaceous systems [7,8].…”

“…As a key factor of bioresource sustainability, fungal proteases have been accorded some major regard because of the ability of fungi to proliferate on inexpensive substrates while excreting copious amounts of enzymes into the surrounding nutrient medium [8]. The efficiency of fungal protease production as well as its catalytic properties have been identified to be specie specific as fungal genera like Aspergillus, Penicillium, Fusarium and Rhizopus have been identified as good sources of proteases [8]. A report by [9] showed that Fusarium oxysoprum was implicated as one of the abundant fungal species with a good proteolytic potential, with enzymes from F. oxysporum strains showing a good deal of thermotolerance [7,9].…”