Isolation and Biochemical characterization of protease isolated from Bacillus sp SVN12

Proteases are the most studied microbial enzymes at commercial, industrial, pharmaceutical analytical, diagnostic, effluent abatement and other sectors. An effective proteolytic enzyme producing microbial strain has been isolated from marine soil under banana tree and evaluated its extracellular protease production properties with respect to different fermentative physiological parameters. The strain has been identified based on biochemical tests according to Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology as Bacillus sp and designated as SVN12. This strain has potential to hydrolyse Starch, Tributyrin, Gelatin and Casein revealing its industrial potential for production of multi-enzyme complex. Since the isolated strain which is not inhibited by EDTA suggesting the enzyme not belongs to the metalloprotease. But the produced enzyme is inhibited by Phenyl methyl sulfonyl fluoride (PMSF) suggesting the enzyme belongs to the serine type of protease. The maximum enzyme production is observed at pH 8.0 and incubated at 37 o C under aerated environment. Analysis of the pH profile before and after fermentation depicted that irrespective of initial medium pH, it is shifted to pH 9.0 after fermentation suggesting the enzyme produced is alkaline in nature. The strain Bacillus SVN12, showed the maximum growth at 37 o C with alkaline protease production of 9900 U/ml in 72h of incubation at pH 8.0 and at rpm 150 with 1.0 % inoculums. Several carbon and nitrogen sources were screened to understand their impact on growth and subsequent production of enzyme. © 2013 Universal Research Publications. All rights reserved