PRODUCTION AND EVALUATION OF EXTRACELLULAR XYLANASE FROM GUT MICROBES OF DRY-WOOD TERMITES: PAPER INDUSTRY

Abstract

Termites play a major role in tropical and subtropical ecosystems. They depend on plants debris and decaying wood for nutrition and helps in recycling the nutrition back to the ecosystem. Since the wood consist of various types of hemicelluloses compounds which highly varies in structure and properties, there is a need for a wide range of digestive enzymes and the termites cannot produce all the enzymes. They are dependent on the symbiotic microbes for the complete digestion of the consumed wood matter. These microbes found in the guts are able to synthesis enzymes, which are good both in quality and quantity. In this study the microbes capable of producing xylanase enzyme was screened and the most potential strain (zone of clearance 2.1cm) was isolated by Congo red dye staining. Such microbe was identified as actinomycetes by using 16s rRNA sequencing and this sequence was searched for similar matches using multiple sequence alignment in BLAST tool. The actinomycetes species was identified as Streptomyces avidinii and it was further used for the production of the enzyme. The optimum enzyme activity was observed in sixth day culture with a concentration of 0.5% Birchwood Xylan. The produced enzyme was then partially purified by using Ammonium sulfate precipitation followed by dialysis. The pulp bleaching ability of the enzyme was calculated from the treatment with the enzyme for a time period of 120 minutes there is a significant reduction in kappa number from 67.66 to 34.58. This passes to apply xylanase enzyme in the paper industry instead of chemicals for bleaching.