A Brief Note On Lipases

4.2 CASE STUDY: LIPASES

4.2.1 Background

Lipases are a type of hydrolases which catalyze the conversion of fats/oils to free fatty acids and glycerol. Lipases are placed after proteases and carbohydrases in the world enzyme market and have about 5% of enzyme market. They are one of the most important group of biocatalysts for biological applications and are quite important enzymes from both physiological and biotechnological view point. The rising interest in lipases is mainly because of wide industrial applications of this enzyme, including detergent formulation, pharmaceuticals synthesis, oils/fats degradation, and cosmetics production.

Lipases currently attract a large amount of attention mainly because of their unique characteristics: substrate specificity, regio-specificity and chiral selectivity (Castro-Ochoa et al., 2005). Like carbohydrases and proteases, lipases that are of microbial origin they enjoy larger industrial importance because they are more stable (as compared to plant and animal origin lipases) and they can be obtained in bulk at comparatively low cost. Because of the characteristics, novel biotechnological applications have been established using lipases for the synthesis of biopolymers and the production of biodiesel, enantiopure, biosensors and flavour compounds (Bornscheuer et al., 2002).

4.2.2 Sources

Lipases are are produced by various plants, animals and microbes. Animal origin Lipases include Human Pancreatic Lipase, Horse Pancreatic Lipase, Pig Pancreatic Lipase and Guinea Pig Pancreatic Lipase. The plant sources rich in Lipases are Avocado, Walnut, Coconut, Lentils, Chickpea, Papaya, Mung Bean, Oats and Eggplant Lipases of microbial origin, mainly bacterial and fungal, represent the most used cl...

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...of publications on the same have grown from 1990, with maximum publications being from Brazil.

CSTR is the most preferred choice of Bioreactor for industrial-scale production of enzymes. It is an easily constructed, versatile, cost-effective reactor, it’s well -mixed nature permits straightforward control over the temperature and pH of the reaction and the supply or removal of gases and it can be readily adapted for automatic control in general that allowing fast response to changes in operating conditions. Also, CSTR is relatively easy to maintain and operate.

The major impediments to the exploration of commercial enzymes are their yield, stability, specificity and cost of production. Newer enzymes for use in commercial applications with desirable biochemical and physicochemical characteristics and low production costs have been focus of much research today.