ABSTRACT
Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are an economically important group of microorganisms capable of producing a variety of metabolites that are being exploited in the food industry. LAB is used industrially for their starter culture properties and as probiotics. Besides their food-fermenting ability, they are known to impart desirable aroma, texture, and organoleptic characteristic to the finished product. Among the intracellular enzymes produced by LAB, lipase represents an important leading biocatalyst with proven potential in the food industry and environmental management. Among them, lipolytic enzymes, such as carboxylesterases, true lipases, and various types of phospholipases, represent novel biomolecules associated with flavor and characteristic aroma of the products in the dairy industry. In LAB with their diversity and occurrence in a range of food products, there is a possibility of obtaining desirable lipase with industrial relevance. Lipases, in general, are inducible enzymes, and their production is highly dependent upon cultural conditions such as pH, temperature, fermentation duration, concentration of substrates, level of inoculums, and most importantly the concentration of inducer. One of the major factors for the expression of lipase activity is the source of lipidic carbon since lipases are large inducible enzymes and are thus generally produced in the presence of a lipid source. Under the native condition, most of the lipase is produced at a very low amount, and hence, combining experimental work with mathematical modeling is required to achieve higher yield. Lipase from food-grade bacteria with a prominent biological function that includes hydrolysis, esterification, alcoholysis, acidolysis, esterification, and aminolysis is primarily known to catalyze the hydrolysis of the fatty acid ester bond in the triglycerol. Though LAB is known to be poor in the production of lipase, their production can be elevated by adopting suitable fermentation parameters. The ability of food-grade bacteria,viz., LAB for their inherent property for the production of lipase has commercial relevance to the food industry. This chapter summarizes recent updates about the lipase of LAB and their vivid biotechnological applications. It also provides a brief description of the study with reference to the lipolytic LAB used by the authors for their bioremediation purpose.
