Isolation and characterization of cellulose degrading fungal strains

Abstract

The study was done for the isolation, screening and characterization of cellulose degrading enzyme from sugarcane bagasse, vegetable and wood morphologically and through biochemical analysis. Cellulase enzyme is a major coast of the world enzyme market. Trichoderma reesei is the chief fungus for the production of cellulase industrially. Its genome encodes 10 cellulases and 16 hemi-cellulases and also produces two exoglucanases, eight endoglucanases, and seven β-glucosidases. Cellulases are inducible enzymes; the regulation of the production of cellulase is controlled by activation and repression mechanism. The production of cellulolytic enzymes such as cellulase is generally been promoted when the substrate that has been provided contains enough and good amount of either the cellulosic biomass or the lignocellulosic biomass. This happens with the cooperation of the very specific and significant transcription factors. The study discusses the molecular mechanism of cellulase production system in T. reesei and genetic engineering based approaches for refining the cellulases production in T. reesei.