Immobilization of CLEA-Lipase of Hevea brasiliensis onto magnetic nanoparticles for enhanced biocatalytic performance

Skim latex from Hevea brasiliensis consist of many useful proteins and enzymes that can be utilized to produce value added products for industrial purposes. In this project, lipase recovered from skim latex is immobilized via cross-linked enzyme aggregates (CLEA) technology, while supported by magnetic nanoparticles for properties enhancement, termed ‘MNP-CLEA-lipase’. MNP-CLEA-lipase is prepared by chemical cross-linking of enzyme aggregates with amino functionalized magnetic nanoparticles which can easily be separated using a magnet. Properties of the newly produced MNP-CLEA-lipase were compared with its unsupported counterpart, CLEA-lipase. The optimum conditions for CLEA-lipase after optimization was at 45 % saturation of ammonium sulphate and 50 mM of glutaraldehyde while for MNP-CLEA-lipase, the optimum conditions after optimization was at 70% saturation of ammonium sulphate and 60 mM of glutaraldehyde. MNP-CLEA-lipase retained higher residual activity at optimum temperature (35oC) and pH (pH 8) compared to CLEA-lipase. MNP-CLEA-lipase also showed higher thermal (25-60oC) and pH (5-10) stability compared to CLEA-lipase. As for the reusability of enzymes, MNP-CLEA-lipase retained 56.46 % of residual activity after 6 cycles of reuse