MOLECULAR STUDIES AND BIOINFORMATIC ANALYSIS OF INDUSTRIALLY IMPORTANT PROTEASE CODING GENES IN METAGENOMIC EXTRACTS AND PURE ISOLATES FROM EXTREME ENVIRONMENT
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Date
2010
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Center of Biotechnology
Abstract
Proteases are large group of ubiquitous enzymes having small size and are compact structures. They are very important industrial enzymes possessing wide range of applications in the detergent, food, leather and pharmaceutical industries. Microbial proteases are known for their key role in biotechnological applications. Metagenomic techniques set a new dimension in exploring novel genes. To maximize industrial enzyme production, the host organism is generally manipulated to carry multiple copies of protease gene. This can be accomplished by cloning the gene on a replicating plasmid, but preferentially this is achieved by amplification of the gene on the chromosome, as such amplification offers the more stable alternative.
Current studies deal with the study of biodiversity contained in indigenous soil of varied nature for the exploration of industrially important protease gene. Moreover, protease genes have been PCR amplified, cloned and sequenced from various cultured microorganisms and metagenomic soil samples, molecular aspects of these genes were studied using different molecular biology techniques, prior to this they were tested for protease activity on casein agar plates. Various bioinformatics tools have been employed for the characterization of these genes. Also protein structures prediction was performed to know the structural and functional features of sequenced protease gene.