A study of the action of purified amylase from Aspergillus oryzae, taka-amylase.

The amylase produced by the fungus, Aspergillus oryzae, has been used in the Orient for centuries and as a partially purified product since 1898 (1)) but surprisingly little is known of its action and properties. This lack of quantitative information is probably due largely to the fact that many investigations have dealt with rather crude alcohol precipitat,ion products of extracts of the mold which contained relatively high concentrat,ions of other carbohydrases as well as amylase. The investigation reported here deals with a st.udy of the products formed from starch by highly purified taka-amylase (2). The preparations of the amylase gave no evidence of the presence of maltase activity when the highest concentrations used here were allowed to react with 1 per cent maltose for 24 hours under the conditions used for the hydrolysis of starch (3).