Abstract:
The usage of lipase for various industrial applications has become so important that it
attracted interests from various researchers. Microbes have become the major source of
lipases where of late, marine and aquatic microbes have become alternative sources to
their terrestrial counterparts. In this study, the ability to produce lipase by the fungus,
Trichoderma viride which was previously isolated from mangroves, was investigated.
The fungal culture was grown in tryptone broth and extracellular lipase was assayed for
its activity using the cupric acetate-pyridine colorimetric method. In the optimization of
the assay, the effect of amount of enzyme was investigated where 1.0 ml showed the
highest hydrolytic activity on olive oil as substrate, compared to 0.2 ml and 2.0 ml, for the
fungus.
