Cold-active yeast proteases as a versatile tool for industry: A review

Microbial proteases are among the most important hydrolytic enzymes and play an important role in metabolic and industrial processes. The use of coldactive yeast proteases find vast applications in number of industrial processes including leather processing, food processing, biotechnology and molecular biology. In textile industry proteases are used as a bio-treatment to save the environment from hazardous chemicals, by treating leather with microbial proteases at different stages of processing. Their application in detergent or dairy and food industries is of special significance. Proteases have much impact in dairy industry where they are added to milk during cheese production to hydrolyze casein. There is an industrial tendency to treat foodstuffs under mild conditions in order to avoid spoilage, contamination and changes in taste and nutritional value at an ambient temperature. These enzymes are useful in domestic as well as industrial processes, depicting high efficiency to low temperatures, low thermal stability and novel substrate specificities. Cold-active yeast proteases have many industrial applications and are an untouched bio-resource. The present review describes versatile potential application of cold-active yeast proteases in different industries.