Abstract
Major progress in the fields of agriculture, industry, and biotechnology over the years has influenced the quest for a potent microorganism with favorable properties to be used in scientific research and industry. This study intended to isolate a new thermophilic-protease-producing bacterium and evaluate its growth and protease production under cultural conditions. Protease producing bacteria were successfully isolated from Sungai Klah Hot Spring Park in Perak, Malaysia, and coded as SKF4; they were promising protease producers. Based on microscopic, morphological, and 16S rRNA gene analysis, isolate SKF4 was identified as Geobacillus thermoglucosidasius SKF4. The process of isolating SKF4 to grow and produce proteases under different cultural conditions, including temperature, pH, NaCl concentration, carbon and nitrogen sources, and incubation time, was explored. The optimum cultural conditions observed for growth and protease production were at 60 to 65 °C of temperature, pH 7 to 8, and under 1% NaCl concentration. Further, the use of casein and yeast extract as the nitrogen sources, and sucrose and fructose as the carbon sources enhanced the growth and protease production of isolate SKF4. Meanwhile, isolate SKF4 reached maximum growth and protease production at 24 h of incubation time. The results of this study revealed a new potent strain of thermophilic bacterium isolated from Sungai Klah Hot Spring Park in Perak, Malaysia for the first time. The high production of thermostable protease enzyme by G. thermoglucosidasius SKF4 highlighted the promising properties of this bacterium for industrial and biotechnological applications.
Highlights
Proteolytic enzymes represent one of the major classes of enzymes with commercial importance that are utilized for industrial purposes
A total number of 14 isolates belonging to a different group of bacteria were successfully isolated from the Sungai Klah Hot Spring Park located in Perak, Malaysia (Figure 1)
The isolates were screened both quantitatively and qualitatively for protease enzyme production (Table 1), resulting in one isolate that exhibited a promising protease production potential (175 U/mL); namely, isolate SKF4 (Figure 2B), which we selected for identification and subsequent studies
Summary
Proteolytic enzymes represent one of the major classes of enzymes with commercial importance that are utilized for industrial purposes. Proteases or peptidases are a class of hydrolytic enzymes involved in hydrolyzing the peptide bonds in proteins and catalyze the synthesis of peptides in the Molecules 2020, 25, 2609; doi:10.3390/molecules25112609 www.mdpi.com/journal/molecules. Rao et al [3] described the protease enzyme as a hydrolytic enzyme that increases the rate of the splitting of peptides links in other proteins. Proteases have a key function regarding industrial enzymes in areas such as domestic, industrial, the processing of leather, bioremediation, nutraceutical purposes, healthcare products, development of a kit for diagnosis, and the incrementation of the value in the production for medical purposes [5]. In 2009, an estimated value of $220 billion of industrial enzymes was sold worldwide [5]. Thermophilic microorganisms devised adaptation towards growing and surviving in extreme temperatures
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