Partial purification and characterization of a xylanase from trichoderma harzianum

Among the fungi,the soft rot fungus trichoderma has shown to be efficient producers of xylan degrading enzyme. in this paper we report partial purification and biochemical characterization of a xylanase (xyn) from a local isolate of a filamentous fungus trichoderma harzianum. xylanase was produced by growing the t. harzianum in vogel's medium where 1 % xylan was used as carbon source in medium to induce the production of enzyme. during purification 40% ammonium sulphate saturation was found to be optimal for xylanase precipitation. the crude sample was dialysed and was also followed by sephadex g-200 chromatography steps. the specific activity of xylanase was increased about 3.14-fold compared with the crude preparations. the ph and temperature optima of the partially purified xylanase was 6.0 and 65 oc respectively. the apparent km and vmax values of the crude xylanase using birchwood xylan as a substrate were 1.52 mg ml-1 and 0.647 μmol min -1 mg-1,respectively.