Production and Industrial Application of Microbial Aspartic Protease: A Review

: Proteases are one of the predominant groups of industrial enzymes and it represents for about 65% of the total global enzyme market. Proteases of microbial origin have great importance over plant sources because they minimize industrial production costs, increase characteristics of the desired products and widely used in biotechnological process. Among the protease enzymes, aspartic proteases are the most important groups of proteolytic enzymes which are mainly produced by plants, animals and many microorganisms to degrade large polypeptides into peptides and amino acids. Microorganisms are also mainly preferred in the production of aspartic protease since they have most of the characteristics desired for biotechnological application rather than plant protease. Aspartic proteases produced from microbial sources are widely used in pharmaceutical, protein hydrolysis, detergent, cheese-making, photographic, baking, meat, leather, food and beverage industries. Although acid protease is vital to enhance the demands of many food and other industries, there are factors affecting the production of aspartic protease. Hence, aspartic protease production using microorganisms is highly affected by various carbon and nitrogen substrates, divalent metal ions, pH, incubation temperature, time, agitation speeds, age of inoculum and density. This review highlights on the production and applications of microbial aspartic proteases.