Purification of the enzyme cellulase

摘要

The enzyme cellulase is available as crude product from fungus cultures with numerous additional activities and concomitant substances. Purification has been attempted several times with chromatographing methods and precipitants. The results are imperfect, often difficult to reproduce and, especially in the case of chromatographic methods, can rarely be achieved without considerable expenditure. The novel method is simple, always reproducible, eliminates the additional activities to insignificant residues and affords high yields with minimal expenditure. The principle of the method is a selectively insolubilising precipitation of the additional activities which leaves the coprecipitating enzyme cellulase in active form. The agent used for this is a mixture of the compounds resorcinol, sodium tribromoacetate and phenol. After this, the purified enzyme can be extracted from the precipitate. The purified enzyme degrades both amorphous and crystalline cellulose as far as glucose.