Ficin: A protease extract with relevance in biotechnology and biocatalysis

Abstract

Due to the problems raised by the use of animal or microbial recombinant proteases, the use of proteases from vegetable origin is becoming increasingly popular.. Among them, sulfidryl proteases have a special interest. Ficin is an outstanding example of this kind of proteases. This paper aims to be to make a comprehensive review of the recent uses of this enzyme, including for example protein hydrolysis, the production of bioactive peptides and antibodies fragments (researchers point that ficin results are more reproducible than using other proteases), meat tenderization, milk coagulations in cheese making or peptide synthesis. Efforts to get industrial immobilized biocatalysts of the enzyme will be also described. The review shows the huge potential and brilliant prospect that this enzyme can have in the near future.

Keywords: Bioactive peptides; Ficin; Protease immobilization; Proteases; Proteolysis; Synthesis of peptides.