Abstract

World demand to find microorganism producers of enzymes with a potential biotechnological use is increasing daily. Therefore, the objective of this study was to find one or more microorganisms capable of oxidizing sugars. Of the thirteen strains tested AFG2 Colletotrichum lindemuthianum was the one who showed the best results concerning oxidant capacity against a variety of disaccharides. This fungus was selected for the time course of production of an extracellular oxide-reducing enzyme in liquid minimal medium. A disaccharide-oxidizing peak was obtained on the tenth day of incubation. It was found that the oxide-reducing activity is of enzymatic nature given that the extracellular extract is exposed to enzyme inhibitors and various denaturing agents. Additionally, it was possible to visualize the oxide-reducing activity by zymogram which allowed us to identify a band of enzyme activity with a calculated molecular mass of 79.43 kDa. Thus, C. lindemuthianum AFG2 wild fungal isolate is a candidate to study the production of these enzymes under optimized growth conditions that can increase performance.

Key words: Colletotrichum lindemuthianum, disaccharide oxide reductase activity relative zymogram