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A novel unhairing enzyme produced by heterologous expression of keratinase gene (kerT) in Bacillus subtilis

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Abstract

To promote enzymatic unhairing for leather production, a new unhairing enzyme is developed. The Keratinase (kerT) gene, which is amplified from B. amyloliquefaciens TCCC11319 by PCR, is expressed in B. subtilis WB600. The recombinant KerT reduces the collagenolytic protease content as well as improving the keratinase content effectively. Therefore, the improved keratinase leads to the obviously unhairing effect, whereas the low collagenolytic protease ensures the integrity of collagen fibers in hide. It represents, the leather grain surface isn’t destroyed thereby the value of finished leather can be maintained. In addition, by analyzing the properties of KerT, tits activity isn’t inhibited with Na+, K+ and Ca2+ which are commonly used in leather production. The freeze-dried fermentation broth can be used directly as unhairing enzyme without addition of traditional sulfide chemicals. By evaluating the properties of unhaired hide, the results show that the collagen degradation ability of this new unhairing enzyme is slightly and it does not cause any adverse effects on the leather quality. Besides, this unhairing enzyme doesn’t further degrade collagen in the time range of 8 h to 24 h, thus it is safely and easy-control in actual production. In conclusion, the enzymatic unhairing method with recombinant KerT has the potential to be more sustainable and efficient alternative than current sulphur-lime method, and it does not require the further purification thereby saving the cost.

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Funding

This work was financially supported by The National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFB0308401), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 21808170), and Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. ZR201807260006).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Industrial Fermentation Microbiology, College of Biotechnology, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, Tianjin, China

    Shan Cao, Dengke Li, Xiaoxiao Ma, Qinglong Xin, Fuping Lu & Yu Li

  2. School of Light Industry and Engineering, Qilu University of Technology, Shandong, China

    Shan Cao & Jinzhi Song

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  1. Shan Cao
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  2. Dengke Li
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  4. Qinglong Xin
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  6. Fuping Lu
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  7. Yu Li
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Correspondence to Shan Cao or Yu Li.

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Cao, S., Li, D., Ma, X. et al. A novel unhairing enzyme produced by heterologous expression of keratinase gene (kerT) in Bacillus subtilis. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 35, 122 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-019-2701-2

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