Impression of Insect's Proteolytic Enzyme Cocoonase and Its Application: A Comprehensive Review

Cocoonase is a naturally secreted protease responsible for facilitating moth emergence from inside of cocoon. This protease is considered as of prime importance for all the cocooning lepidopteron. It specifically degrades sericin, the glue protein of the cocoon without damaging the fibroin and makes an escape hatch for adult emergence. Owing to this property cocoonase was characterized and explored for its prospective utilization in eco-friendly enzyme-based silk degumming. However, the applicability of cocoonase has not been explored much other than in silk degumming. Moreover, being a serine protease, and because of its similarity to trypsin, there is, tremendous potential for this enzyme to have biomedical applications, as well as numerous other uses that need to be investigated. This review article presents the comprehensive physicochemical properties of the cocoonase and its possible scope of applications in the near future.