Production of alkaline serine protease from Bacillus subtilis MTCC 8601

Alkaline serine protease is a proteolytic enzyme having a wide array of industrial applications. These proteases have a high enzymatic activity at a high pH ranging between 8-12 and temperature 38°C, hence finding its importance in industries such as detergent industries where pHs reach as high as 10.7 due to the presence of caustic soda and other alkaline materials. Production of alkaline serine protease from Bacillus subtilis MTCC 8601 on establishment of a shake flask fermentation protocol has been carried out in this study. Qualitative analysis using the Biuret test has been conducted, quantification of protease in the crude enzymatic extract was carried out using Lowry’s method of quantitative analysis which was found to be 0.847 mg/ml. Further, the enzymatic activity of the protease has been determined using the high sensitivity Ninhydrin method of amino acid detection for which the results were 3.51 mg/ml when Bovine serum albumin was used as a substrate and 1.419 mg/ml when Gelatin was used as a substrate, the unit of enzyme is found to be 0.445 μg/ mol min and 0.180 μg/ mol min for each substrate respectively.