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

Abstract

Proteases are important enzymes for various applications of industrial importance. Microbial proteases play an imperative task in various biotechnological processes. The endeavors of this work were to screen and isolate proteolytic microbes from soil. Banasthali (Tonk district) is situated in southeast Rajasthan. The geo-climatic location of Banasthali has been considered to be highly rich in wide variety of diversity of macro flora and fauna. Soil is the ideal habitat for many extracellular enzyme producing microorganisms therefore soil samples were collected from two diverse situates of Banasthali University and were used in present investigation. Bacteria and fungi from soil were isolated by serial dilution agar plate technique. Bacterial and fungal isolates were screened for extracellular protease production. For qualitative analysis (zone of hydrolysis), all isolates were inoculated in gelatin agar plate and skim milk agar plate. Protease production was observed by the occurrence of clear zone around bacterial and fungal colonies. Three bacterial and three fungal isolates, selected by initial screening were subjected to extracellular protease production in protease production medium and it was found that bacterial isolate (No. 2 from sample 1) was producing maximum protease activity (37.94 U/mL) after 3 days of incubation. Likewise fungal isolate (No. 3 from sample 1) was showing highest protease activity (51.33 U/mL) after 5 days of incubation.