Biochemical studies on Bacterial Thermozymes from Novel sp: An Industrial and Astrobiological importance

by Dr. D.M. Gurumurthy (Department of Biochemistry, Kuvempu University, Karnataka)

Thursday, March 14, 2013 from 16:00 to 17:00 (Asia/Kolkata)
at Colaba Campus ( P305 )

Description

Recent developments show that thermophiles are a good source of novel biocatalysts that are of great industrial interest. Thermostable polymer-degrading enzymes such as amylases, pullulanases, lipases, proteases, and many others are expected to play an important role in food, chemical, pharmaceutical, paper, pulp, and waste-treatment industries. Considerable research efforts have been made to understand the stability of thermozymes. Our findings, highlights the significance of structural integrity of two novel enzymes α-amylase and lipase from thermophilic Geobacillus sp. in temperature tolerance and other environmental factors. The current understanding of the mechanism of radiation resistance in certain microorganisms is still unclear. It is suggested that, certain antioxidant enzymes are responsible for the minimization of the radiation effect in microorganisms. On the basis of this, it appears that stratospheric microorganisms could be the best test examples for these experiments as they experience extreme conditions like radiation, temperature and other stress of the stratosphere that could affect cellular mechanisms in these microorganisms. We have conducted experiments to assess the involvement of moderate thermostable catalase enzyme in radiation resistance of B. stratosphericusby exposing it to ionizing and non-ionizing radiation sources. The results show that, the increased level of catalase in B. stratosphericus to protect the cells by repairing the DNA damage from free radicals generated by radiation.

Organised by

Dr. Vaibhav Prabhudesai