Cysteine Protease (Capparin) from Capsules of Caper (Capparis spinosa)

Yasar Demir¹, Azize Alayli Güngör², Elif Duygu Duran³ and Nazan Demir³*

¹Department of Chemistry, College of Education, Atatürk University, TR-25240 Erzurum, Turkey
²Refik Saydam Institute of Hygiene, Headmaster of Erzurum Region, TR-25100 Erzurum, Turkey
³Department of Chemistry, College of Arts and Sciences, Atatürk University, TR-25240 Erzurum, Turkey

Article history:
Received December 20, 2006
Accepted March 19, 2008

Key words:
protease, caper (Capparis spinosa), food production

Summary:
Proteases are enzymes that perform very important functions in organisms and are used for a variety of objectives in vitro. In recent years, proteases have been used for clinical, pharmaceutical (alimentary digestion, anti-inflammatory, etc.) and industrial applications (cheese production, meat tenderizing, leather tanning). In this research, a protease has been purified from capsules of caper (Capparis spinosa) and characterized. Caper plants have been used for food and medicine since ancient times. The plant grows abundantly in certain regions of Turkey. Ammonium sulphate fractionation and a CM Sephadex column were used for purification of the enzyme. The purification enzyme has an optimum pH=5.0 and its optimum temperature was 60 °C. The v_max and K_m values determined by Lineweaver-Burk graphics were 1.38 μg/(L·min) and 0.88 μg/L, respectively. The purification degree and the molecular mass of the enzyme (46 kDa) were determined by SDS-PAGE and gel filtration chromatography. It was investigated whether the purified and characterized protease could cause milk to congeal or digest chicken and cow meat. The results show that protease can be used for industrial production.

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