Abundance of keratinase waste is generated from industries and their destruction can cause much environmental deterioration. Chicken feathers are non-degradable because of the presence of insoluble protein keratin and resistance to degradation by common protease enzyme, but several microorganisms are capable of degrading keratin by the enzyme keratinase. This study was planned to evaluate the production of keratinase from Bacillus thuringiensis SJAMB isolated from poultry waste for the capability to disintegrate the chicken feather proficiently. Enzyme activity was analyzed and the degraded feathers were identified by weight loss. SEM analysis revealed the variations of the feather keratin during degradation. The crude keratinase was purified by column chromatography and ammonium salt precipitation and the molecular weight of protein was examined by SDS-PAGE as 56 kDa. Degraded feather used as biofertilizer showed good growth of the green gram plant than urea and chemical fertilizer and this was observed in the day 1 and 13 respectively. Finally, the chlorophyll content was estimated using UV spectrometer at 663 nm and 345 nm and it was observed that the plant treated with degraded feather showed highest chlorophyll content of about 2.502 followed by plant treated with the enzyme (2.418) and urea (2.372) respectively. This study explored the chicken feather degradation using keratinoltyic bacteria resolving the mechanism of keratin hydrolysis by other processes and replace the currently used hazardous fertilizers.
Janani et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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