Cellulase enzyme catalyst producing bacterial strains from vermicompost and its application in low-density...

Cellulose is the main polysaccharide present abundantly in the earth, an important substrate for the cellulase enzyme. Cellulases have attracted considerable attention due to its diverse application in different textile, detergent, leather, food, feed and paper industries. Among the cellulase producing microbes, bacteria have a faster growth compared to other microbes. The present study focuses on isolating bacterial strains (Bacillus pacificus and Pseudomonas mucidolens) from vermicompost. The study focused on extracting cellulase enzyme and its molecular weight using SDS-PAGE, which was determined to be 32Kda. The maximum enzyme activity resulted to be 0.12 U/mL and 0.17 U/mL after dialysis. The LDPE degradation was reported up to 30 days. Further, the growth conditions of the bacterial strains were optimised at different pH and temperature. The degradation of LDPE was determined using FTIR analysis, resulting in the peak changes (formation and shifts). The bacterial strains were morphologically characterized using Scanning Electron Microscopy. The bacterial strains Bacillus pacificus and Pseudomonas mucidolens were identified using 16 S rRNA sequencing.