Isolation, screening and characterization of cold active alkaline protease

Cold active enzymes are produced by microorganisms existing permanently in cold habitats located in polar zones at high altitudes or deep sea. Among cold active enzymes cold active proteases constitute an important group of enzymes which have high catalytic efficiencies at lower temperatures and have important applications in industries like detergents, food, pharmaceutical, silk, leather and environmental bioremediation. The aim of the present study was isolation and screening of Cold active alkaline protease producing bacteria from the soil sample collected from Manasbal Lake, Kashmir, India. With this aim the Soil sample was collected from Manasbal Lake, Kashmir and bacterial microflora can be isolated and 50 numbers of isolates were isolated. These isolates were screened for protease activity and out of 50 isolates screened for protease activity only 3 isolates showed protease activity at 10ºC. These isolates were identified as Bacillus sp., Micrococcus sp., and Staphylococcus sp., on the basis of morphological and biochemical characterization and named as MLP-1, MLP-2 and MLP-3. The mlp-1 enzyme was characterized and determination of optimum pH and temperature can be done at which the enzyme showed a maximum activity. The mlp-1 enzyme was cold active and alkaline as it showed a maximum activity at pH 12 and temp 4ºC.