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Updated: Jun 24, 2026

OLIgo Mass Profiling (OLIMP) of Extracellular Polysaccharides
Published on: June 21, 2010
Diversity of plant cell wall esterases in thermophilic and thermotolerant fungi
Sonia K Ghatora1, Bhupinder S Chadha, Harvinder S Saini
1Department of Microbiology, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar 143005, India.
Abstract:
Fourteen thermophilic and thermotolerant fungal strains isolated from composting soils produced plant cell wall-acting esterases in a medium containing corn cobs and oat spelt xylan. The concentrated and dialyzed protein extracts of these fungi were fractionated using isoelectric-focusing, gels sliced and eluted protein in each slice was assayed for esterase activity against p-nitrophenyl acetate. A total of 84 esterases detected on the basis of pI were found to show distinct preferential substrate specificities towards p-nitrophenyl acetate, p-nitrophenyl ferulate and p-nitrophenyl butyrate, and were putatively classified as acetyl esterases and esterases types I and II. None of the esterases were active against p-nitrophenyl myristate. In addition, these esterases were characterized as acid, neutral or alkaline active.
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