Screening for lipase activity in Trichoderma viride isolated from Acrostichum aureum

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.