Isolation, production and application of fibrinolytic enzyme from fermented food sources: a review

Abstract

The accumulation of the fibrin in bacterial fibrinolytic enzymes finds applications to treat and prevent cardiovascular diseases which fail in hemostasis that leads to the formation of undesirable blood clots in the blood vessels leading to condition called thrombosis. The fibrinolytic enzymes from food grade organisms are useful for thrombolytic therapy. Conventional thrombolytic agents such as streptokinase, nattokinase etc.  Nattokinase is one such fibrinolytic enzyme with a wide range of applications in Pharmaceutical industry, health care and medicine etc. Hence, potent blood-clot dissolving protein used for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases is produced by the bacterium Bacillus subtilis during the fermentation of soybeans to produce Natto. The health benefits of some fermented foods are synthesis of nutrients, prevention of cancer, diabetes due to presence of functional microorganisms, which possess probiotics properties, antimicrobial, antioxidant, etc. The first report of fibrinolytic enzyme production of cow dung used as a cheap substrate from Bacillus species in SSF has been given earlier. This review describes different isolation methods which enable the screening and selection of promising organisms for industrial production. The purification and properties of these fibrinolytic proteases is discussed, and the use of fibrinolytic enzyme. In order to obtain Bacillus species producing fibrinolytic enzymes, the fermented food sample such as sprouted grain and processed grain etc were used. The heat tolerant isolates initially were selected for catalase test. Fibrinolytic activity of the selected isolates was determined by using Fibrin plate assay.  From the above work, it can be concluded that the fibrinolytic enzyme produced by Bacillus from fermented food samples had the ability to degrade the fibrin and hence can be used for functional food formulation.