Production and characterization of amylases from Zea mays malt

• Autor(a) principal: Biazus,Joana Paula Menezes
• Data de Publicação: 2009
• Outros Autores: Souza,Roberto Rodrigues de, Márquez,Jesus Espinoza, Franco,Telma Teixeira, Santana,José Carlos Curvelo, Tambourgi,Elias Basile
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Brazilian Archives of Biology and Technology
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1516-89132009000400024
• topic: Maize seed; malting; α and β-amylase; biochemistry characterization; germination model

In this work the α and β-amylase enzymes were obtained from maize (Zea mays) malt and were biochemistry characterized. A germination study to obtain the maize malt with good amylase activity was made. The maize seeds were germinated in laboratory and the enzymatic activity was measured daily. Activity dependence to germination time were fitted to an exponential model (A=A0eµt), which showed that the behaviour of enzymatic activity in the germination process was similar to the growth of the microorganism. Its model could be applied to describe the mechanism of α-amylase production for each maize varieties and others cereals. Maize malt characterization showed that α and β-amylase had optimal pH between 4-6.5, optimal temperature 50 and 90ºC, and molecular weight of 67.4 and 47.5kDa, respectively. This work contributed with the advances in biotechnology generating of conditions for application of a new and of low price amylases source.