Abstract

Enzymes promote various biological reactions necessary for sustaining human life by reducing activation energy required for reactions without causing permanent changes. Both plants and animals enzymes cannot be exploited for industrial application but microbial enzymes offers advantages such as easy to handle, fast multiplication and easy genetic transformation in specified conditions, easily immobilized, and high production yield with consistent quality. Microbial enzymes are produced by fermentation (submerged and solid state), worked for various bioprocesses through the inputs of rDNA technology, metagenomics and with protein engineering. These enzymes play crucial functions in different array of industrial resources and form the backbone for a large number of industrial productions. In many cases, free forms of microbial enzymes have demonstrated the efficient bio-industrial application. These free forms of microbial enzymes have to be utilized in highly controlled environments whereas immobilized forms of enzymes show greater resistance to environment variations and recover in easy manner in comparison to free forms. Nowadays, microbial enzymes are applied in many industrial resources such as medical industries, food industries, detergent, textile, wastewater treatment plants, pharmaceuticals industries, etc. As per the definite applications, a preferred enzyme immobilization technique and appropriate carriers are selected. These techniques may be covalent binding, adsorption, entrapment, encapsulation, etc. This article mainly inculdes microbial enzymes, especially β-mannanase, Endo-β-glucanase (cellulase), Lipase, Protease, Amylase, immobilization techniques and utility in various industrial applications. Also briefly includes the biotechnological applications of xylanase, pectinase and keratinase. Furthermore, discuss problems and limitations related to industrial enzymes and market scenarios.