Plant Lipases: A Potential Candidate for Commercial Exploitation

Lipases (triacylglycerol acylhydrolases, EC 3.1.1.3) catalyze the hydrolysis and the synthesis of esters formed from glycerol and long-chain fatty acids by acting at explicit position on the glycerol backbone of a lipid substrate. In view of the increasing understanding of lipases and their many applications in high-value syntheses and as bulk enzymes, these enzymes are having an increasing impact on bioprocessing. Lipases occur ubiquitously in nature, but only microbial lipases are presently commercially significant on industrial and therapeutic point of view. On the other hand recently plant originated lipase has provided a great alternative to microbial lipase due to the specificity, low cost, availability and ease of purification. Despite many applications of plant lipases, there are still challenges and limitations which create a gap between the small scale use and commercial exploitation of novel lipases. This review article gives an overall idea about the occurrence of various plant lipases along with different assay, purification, inhibition and immobilization process of these lipases with a specific reference to rice bran lipase.