BACKGROUND Mannanase is an enzyme that can catalyze random hydrolysis of beta-1,4-mannosidic linkages in the main chain of mannans, glucomannans and galactomannans which are the key polymers in hemicellulose. It has been used in a number of different industrial applications including food, feed, pharmaceutical, pulp/paper industries, and second generation biofuel. To optimize the expression sys...

A major environmental concern due to dispersal of industrial and urban wastes generated by human activities is the contamination of soil. The release of heavy metals into the terrestrial ecosystem is a major problem. Accumulation of heavy metals in environment and particularly in soil is a serious environmental concern, as the accumulated heavy metal ions can find their way into living organism...

THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONTAMINANTS WHICH HAVE THEIR MAJOR EFFECTS ON THE SMALL INTESTINE MAY BE CLASSIFIED INTO FIVE MAJOR CATEGORIES: (1) bacterial, viral, and parasitic agents, (2) food and plant substances, (3) environmental and industrial products, (4) pharmaceutical agents, and (5) toxic agents whose metabolic effects are dependent on interreaction with intestinal bacterial flora, other physic...

Hydroxynitrile lyase (HNL) catalyzes the degradation of cyanohydrins and causes the release of hydrogen cyanide (cyanogenesis). HNL can enantioselectively produce cyanohydrins, which are valuable building blocks for the synthesis of fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals, and is used as an important biocatalyst in industrial biotechnology. Currently, HNLs are isolated from plants and bacteria. Beca...

Enzymes have important features that may facilitate their application in industrial processes and have been used as alternatives to chemical catalysts. In particular, proteases can be isolated from microorganisms, which provide important sources of advantageous enzymes for industrial processes. For example, Eupenicillium javanicum is a filamentous fungus that has been shown to express industria...

The neutral protease has high potential for industrial applications, and attempts to improve enzyme expression level have important application values. In the present study, a neutral protease-encoding gene, Banpr, was cloned from Bacillus amyloliquefaciens strain K11, and a genetic manipulation method specific for this difficult-to-transform strain was developed for the high-level expression o...

The growth of baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae in medium containing sucrose requires a high level of extracellular invertase enzyme activity. However, the expression of invertase is under the strict control of glucose repression in S. cerevisiae. In addition, invertase enzyme activity is also affected by physiological stress conditions that baker's yeast is exposed to during the various s...

Industrial enzyme market has been projected to reach US$ 6.2 billion by 2020. Major reasons for continuous rise in the global sales of microbial enzymes are because of increase in the demand for consumer goods and biofuels. Among major industrial enzymes that find applications in baking, alcohol, detergent, and textile industries are α-amylases. These are produced by a variety of microbes, whic...

A genetic transformation system for an industrial wine yeast strain is presented here. The system is based on the acquisition of cycloheximide resistance and is a direct adaptation of a previously published procedure for brewing yeasts (L. Del Pozo, D. Abarca, M. G. Claros, and A. Jiménez, Curr. Genet. 19:353-358, 1991). Transformants arose at an optimal frequency of 0.5 transformant per microg...

Filamentous actinomycetes are commercially widely used as producers of natural products (in particular antibiotics) and of industrial enzymes. However, the mycelial lifestyle of actinomycetes, resulting in highly viscous broths and unfavorable pellet formation, has been a major bottleneck in their commercialization. Here we describe the successful morphological engineering of industrially impor...