Production and characterization of lipase from Staphylococcus sp. SDMlip

Lipases (triacylglycerol hydrolases, EC 3.1.1.3) are enzymes that hydrolyze triacylglycerol at the oil-water interface and liberate free fatty acids and glycerol (Dheeman et al., 2010). Lipases belong to the class of serine hydrolases (Sharma et al., 2009) and contains the consensus sequence G-X1-S-X2-G as the catalytic moiety, where G = glycine, S = serine, X1 = histidine and X2 = glutamic or aspartic acid (Mala and Takeuchi, 2008; Seo et el., 2014). Lipases are widely distributed in plants, animals, insects and microorganisms (Bhumibhamon et al., 2003). Lipases from microorganisms have gained much importance mainly due to their availability and stability (Ginalska et al., 2004). The chemo-, regioand enantiospecific behaviour of these enzymes has gained tremendous interest among scientists and industrialists (Gulati et al., 1999). Though only 5% industrial enzyme market is covered, lipases are important as biotechnologically valuable ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 3 Number 6 (2014) pp. 423-436 http://www.ijcmas.com