Screening and Isolation of Protease producing Marine Bacteria

Abstract

The study was done with an intention of screening and isolating marine bacterial strains which produce industrially important enzyme, protease. A total of twelve bacterial strains were isolated from three sampling sites along the coast of Arabian Sea. The strains were screened for the production of protease enzyme and six of the twelve strains were showed to be protease producers. Enzyme activities are affected by a number of environmental parameters. Hence, it was attempted to optimize the conditions such as pH, temperature and incubation period for maximum protein production. Strain Bb4 was found to be the best protease producer and showed maximum production at 37°C. Two strains Bb1 and Bb2 showed very high protease production at pH 9. This indicates that these two strains produce alkaline protease which has wide application in industries. The maximum protease production by most of the strains was at the third day of incubation with Bb4 and Tb4 with maximum production.