›› 2017, Vol. 29 ›› Issue (4): 644-650.DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1004-1524.2017.04.19

• Environmental Science • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Isolation and identification of a pig hair keratin-degrading strain

LEI Ping, LIU Biao, YIN Hongmei   

  1. Hunan Microbiology Institute, Changsha 410009, China
  • Received:2016-11-22 Online:2017-04-20 Published:2017-04-27

Abstract: To screening the microorganisms with high pig-hair keratin-degrading capacity, the strains were isolated from environment soil collected from the pig hair waste site by adopting the culture medium taking keratin as sole carbon and nitrogen source and the optimal environmental factors for keratinase activity were investigated. In this study, five strains with pig hair degrading ability were obtained by the method of enrichment and domenstication, while the strain E-2 showed the highest capatity of degrading pig hair keratin. The degrading rate of pig hair keratin was up to 58.6% after 5 days fermentation and the keratinase activty reached 46.6 U·mL-1.The strain E-2 was identified as Yarrowia lipolytica based on morphology, physiological characteristics and ITS sequence analysis. Experimental results of environmental factors showed that the optimum cultivation conditions for keratinase activity was pH 6.0-7.0,temperature 35-40 ℃,pig hair content 15 g·L-1 and culture time 108 h. E-2 could degrade pig hairs, chicken feathers and wools, while the degrading activtiy and keratinase acticity varied with different keratin substrates. Up to date, little is known about the pig hair keratin degrading by Yarrowia lipolytica, thus, we provided a new efficient keratin-degarding strain to utilize pig hair.

Key words: pig hair keratin, keratin degrading strain, Yarrowia lipolytica

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