The extent of thermal enzyme denaturation also depends on
the activation entropy (S*
d) of this event, which expresses
the amount of energy per degree involved in the transition
from a native to a denatured state [8]. As shown in Table 1,
consistently with the increase in the disorder or randomness
degree consequent to such a transition, the S*
d values were
positive (599.59–610.49 J/mol K) at all temperatures at which
A. foetidus protease was tested. In addition, they were higher
than those reported for the above proteases from A. awamori
(−93.5 ≤ S*
d ≤ 126.5 J/mol K) [15], N. alba (S*
d = −69.99 J/mol K)
[11] and A. fumigatus (−69.5 ≤ S*
d ≤ −68.2 J/mol K) [7].
Ano