Fungal Keratinases: Enzymes with Immense Biotechnological Potential

Abstract

Fungal enzymes are vital for various biotechnological processes and their impact is going to be felt much more in coming years. Fungal enzymes such as proteases, amylases, lipases, pectinases and tannases are used in meat, sugar and other food industries. Fungal keratinases are the proteases, which hydrolyse hard-to-degrade keratin, with a lot of potentials whose demand is gradually increasing due to their broad specificity towards variety of insoluble keratin substrates. Biotechnological methods employing microbial keratinases play a key role in processing keratin waste. Amongst microbial diversiform, fungal sources have become more perpetual choice for keratinase production, due to their low cost, easy recovery and high enzyme activity. These are inducible enzymes, which are produced extracellularly or intracellularly primarily from dermatophytic and broad saprotrophic non-specialized ascomycetous fungi in the presence of keratinous substrates. Fungal keratinases are a great resource pool for industrial sector and sustainable environmental management, and a source of value-added products. These enzymes can cause solubilization of keratinous waste through proteolysis and sulfitolysis as well as fascinate researchers for applications in skin/hide dehairing, textile processing, detergent formulation, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries and bioactive peptide production. Microbial degradation of keratinous waste is preferred over chemical methods since it is more specific, saves energy and produces value-added hydrolysate that can find application in food, feed and agriculture. Fungal keratinases can easily penetrate into keratinous substrate due to filamentous growth of the producer that produces high enzyme titres. This chapter focuses on the potential applications of fungal keratinases in different industries. The biotechnological conversion of keratinous waste into soluble products and subsequent application in food, feed and agroindustry would be discussed.