Purification and characterization of chitinase from Streptomyces violascens NRRL B2700

Chitinase is one of the important enzymes as it is directly linked to Chitin that has wide applications in industrial, medical and commercial fields for its biocompatibility and biodegradability. Here, we report extracellular chitinase production by Streptomyces violascens NRRL B2700 under submerged fermentation condition. Chitinase production started after 10 h of incubation and reached to maximum level at 72 h of cultivation. Studies on the influence of additional carbon and nitrogen sources on chitinase production revealed that maltose, xylose, fructose, lactose, soybean meal and ammonium nitrate served as good carbon and nitrogen sources to enhance chitinase yield by 1.6 to 6 fold. Medium supplemented with 1% colloidal chitin produced high chitinase concentration (0.1714 U/mg). The enzyme chitinase was purified from the culture broth by 75% ammonium sulphate precipitation, DEAE-cellulose ion-exchange and sephadex G-100 gel filtration. The molecular mass of the purified chitinase was 65 kDa as estimated by SDS-PAGE. The apparent Michaelis constant (K(m)) and the maximum rate (V(max)) of the enzyme for colloidal chitin were 1.556 mg/mL and 2.680 μM/min/mg, respectively suggested high affinity towards-chitin. Possibly, it is the first report on production of chitinase from S. violascens NRRL B2700. The findings were encouraging, especially for cost effective production, and further warrants media and purification optimization studies for enhanced yield.