CONCENTRATION AND IMMOBILIZATION OF A PROTEOLYTIC COMPLEX

Proteases are very important industrial enzymes, accounting for more than a half of the total enzymes used in the world. For leather industry they have an important technological role as well as for waste degradation.This paper reports the researches done for obtaining immobilized proteolytic complexes for using in biodegradation purposes. Three bacterial strains were cultivated in minimal medium with 0.6% sheep fur as carbon source. The concentration of the culture medium was performed by rotaevaporator, at 35 C, followed by lyophilisation at 0.04 mbar, for 18 hours. The concentrated complex was immobilized on clay and adabline, which are inert and cheap supports that are technically convenient because we used the adsorption process for immobilization. Collagenase and keratinase activity was assayed for estimation of the immobilization efficiency. The best results were obtained when the immobilization support was clay, using a 2:1(ml enzyme/g immobilization support) ratio.