Rani Aruna, Pandey Dev Mani, Pandey Jay Prakash
Department of Bioengineering and Biotechnology, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, Jharkhand, 835215, India.
Central Tasar Research and Training Institute (Central Silk Board, MOT Govt. of India), Piska Nagri, Ranchi, Jharkhand, 835303, India.
Protein J. 2025 Feb;44(1):48-61. doi: 10.1007/s10930-024-10246-5. Epub 2025 Feb 4.
Cocoonase is a naturally secreted protease responsible for facilitating moth emergence from inside of cocoon. This protease is considered as of prime importance for all the cocooning lepidopteron. It specifically degrades sericin, the glue protein of the cocoon without damaging the fibroin and makes an escape hatch for adult emergence. Owing to this property cocoonase was characterized and explored for its prospective utilization in eco-friendly enzyme-based silk degumming. However, the applicability of cocoonase has not been explored much other than in silk degumming. Moreover, being a serine protease, and because of its similarity to trypsin, there is, tremendous potential for this enzyme to have biomedical applications, as well as numerous other uses that need to be investigated. This review article presents the comprehensive physicochemical properties of the cocoonase and its possible scope of applications in the near future.
茧酶是一种自然分泌的蛋白酶，负责促进蛾从茧内羽化。这种蛋白酶被认为对所有结茧的鳞翅目昆虫至关重要。它能特异性地降解茧的丝胶蛋白（茧的胶蛋白），而不损害丝素蛋白，并为成虫羽化制造一个逃生孔。由于这一特性，茧酶被进行了表征，并探索了其在基于酶的环保型丝绸脱胶中的潜在用途。然而，除了丝绸脱胶外，茧酶的适用性尚未得到太多探索。此外，作为一种丝氨酸蛋白酶，由于其与胰蛋白酶相似，这种酶在生物医学应用以及许多其他需要研究的用途方面具有巨大潜力。这篇综述文章介绍了茧酶的综合物理化学性质及其在不久的将来可能的应用范围。
