ASU scientists develop unique enzyme producer

7 December 2018 Department of Information and Media Communications
Young scientists of Altai State University have developed a unique producer of recombinant phytase enzyme.

Recombinant phytase is currently being actively used in animal husbandry as an additive to animal feed for better phosphorus absorption. Phosphorus is one of the micronutrients that affect animal growth, build their bone tissue and strengthen the immune system. The recombinant phytase enzyme absorbs phosphorus from feed by 50–70% better, which as a result increases animals’ weight by 5–10% and improves a number of other indicators.

The project is supervised by an assistant professor of the Department of Organic Chemistry at the Faculty of Chemistry of Altai State University, Candidate of Biology Dmitry Scherbakov.

“We have already obtained the recombinant phytase enzyme and now we should understand how active the enzyme is and start testing it,” Dmitry Scherbakov said. “We plan to conduct tests at the beginning of the next year. But first of all, we must determine how complex the further technology of obtaining this enzyme will be. In this case, we focus on E.coli. However, production on the basis of E.coli is relatively expensive, therefore, it is possible that in our work we will use the hay bacillus.”

Currently Russian agricultural enterprises work mainly with imported products.

“All agricultural enterprises working with animal feed use phytase. Now they are buying mainly imported products, so our task is to make our own, domestic recombinant phytase enzyme, which will be cheaper and more efficient,” Dmitry Shcherbakov concluded.

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