The leather processing industry contributes significantly
to the country’s economic development.
Waste from the leather industry leads to environmental pollution. Alkaline proteases have dehairing properties and can be used in the
leather processing industry.
Conventional methods in leather processing involve the use of hydrogen sulphide and other chemicals which are pollutants. Thus, for environmental reasons, the enzymatic dehairing process has
more advantages over the chemical dehairing process
(Andersen 1998).
Proteases are used during the soaking, dehairing and bating states of preparing skins and hides.
Pancreatic proteases are used in the bating process and the
use of microbial alkaline proteases are popular (Varela
et al. 1997).
Alkaline proteases swell hair roots and attack khair follicle proteins, resulting in the easy removal of hair.
These enzymes have been widely studied and their
production from Bacillus sp. has gained momentum;moreover, the high activity and stability of these enzymes
at various temperature and pH ranges have also attracted
the attention of researchers. Dehairing proteases have been
characterized from various Bacillus sp., e.g. B. subtilis
11QDB32 (Varela et al. 1997), B. amyloliquefaciens (George
et al. 1995), B. subtilis K2 (Hameed et al. 1996; Hameed
et al. 1999) and B. circulans (Subba Rao et al. 2009).