Purification of amylase from tilapia by magnetic particle.

Recent development in magnetic carrier technology involves the use of nonmagnetic substrates attached to superparamagnetic particles forming functionally modified magnetic support to isolate a particular enzyme in a controllable magnetic field. In this study, the superparamagnetic particles were modified by epichlorohydrin and other agents to cross-link with starch to form the purification support. This affinity support was able to bind the amylase and was used in the purification of amylase from Taiwan tilapia. After ammonium sulfate precipitation of amylase from Taiwan tilapia, the modified superparamagnetic particles were able to purify the crude amylase by 20.78-fold with recovery of activity of 75.6%. The molecular weight of the amylase was estimated to be 66.1 kDa by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Both crude and purified amylase reached an optimum at a pH of 8.0 and temperature of 50C, and the enzyme was stable between 20 and 50C. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS Because of the rapid development of high technology such as carrier supports for enzyme purification, the development, research and application of magnetic carriers are timely needed. The present study demonstrated that the affinity superparamagnetic particles could be used as a carrier support to absorb and purify the amylase and that technology of affinity purification can be widely used in protein purification. Compared with the traditional chromatography used in the purification of proteins, this novel affinity superparamagnetic particle technology is rapid, has low operation cost, requires simple facilities, and involves easy separation and recovery of the enzymes.