ABSTRACT
Enzymes have been used indirectly since antiquity by man. e beer and wine production involving the fermentation of sugar to ethanol, vinegar production achieved by the oxidation of ethanol, and curdling of milk by lactose fermentation are thousands of years old traditional processes where catalytic activities of enzymes are responsible for chemical transformations. e protease rennin derived from calf stomach was the rst used cell-free enzyme for the coagulation of milk protein in the cheese-making process. Currently, there are more than 3000 dierent enzymes identied from a wide variety of organisms nding a wide range of commercial application in detergents, food as well as biotechnological, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries. e use and function of the majority of these enzymes have been limited by several factors such as enzyme instability at high temperatures, extreme pH, ionic strength, presence of organic solvents, cofactors requirement, and narrow range of substrate specicity. To overcome these limitations, it is necessary to search for new microbial sources by
tapping the microbial diversity. Extremozymes from extremophiles have been isolated from a diverse array of exotic and harsh environments that are inhospitable to support life and their specic properties can be explored for the development of novel process applications (Schiraldi and De Rosa, 2002).
