Extracellular enzymes are important in the environment for
degradation of macromolecular compounds and for providing food
substrates for algae and bacteria (Nausch, 2000). In general, they are
substrate inducible and product repressible catalysts (Martinez et al.,
1996). It was reported that extracellular enzymes are directly related
to available organic matter (Karner et al., 1995; Martinez et al., 1996).
Alkaline phosphatase (AP; EC 3.1.3.1) is one of extracellular enzymes. It
hydrolyses a wide range of organicPcompounds due to its low
specificity for organicmoiety compared to more specific phosphatases