Amylases are starch degrading enzymes. These enzymes play a pivotal role in the biotechnology industries in food, fermentation, textiles, and paper production. Many industries lack local amylase supply, so the demand for amylase is often high. The study focuses on the screening and isolation of amylase producing bacteria from disparate samples of soil. The promising hydrolytic strains of bacteria from the collected samples were characterized using enzyme kinetics and further investigation is carried out to characterize the amylase enzyme produced by optimization of pH and temperature. The shortlisted isolate was identified using 16s rRNA sequencing. This study is an initial result of an exploration where soil is a source of industrially important amylase producing bacterial strains.

Methotrexate is one of the most popular and safe anti-inflammatory drugs which is an antifolate-type antimetabolite and is used as an anticancer drug. In this study, oppositely charged chitosan and fucoidan have been non-covalently bonded using their electrostatic interactions with the methotrexate drug loaded into these nanoparticles. Fucoidan is obtained from marine algae which are composed of l-fucose and sulfate groups in various types of brown seaweeds; whereas chitosan is a naturally occurring biopolymer obtained through the N-deacetylation of chitin. Depending on the fucoidan / chitosan (F / C) weight ratio, three distinct nanoparticles (1F / 1C; 3F / 1C; 5F / 1C) are synthesized and characterized. Nanoparticles were prepared using cross linkers EDC and NHS at a constant pH to reduce the conjugate size. The prepared conjugates were characterized for their size and zeta potential using DLS analysis and the functional groups were analysed using FTIR. DLS results proclaimed that there was size reduction in particle size with cross linker and without the drug methotrexate. The 5:1 F/C nanoparticles was seen to be 441.5 nm, the difference being considerable larger in the 5:1 formulation. Hence for further analysis 5:1 F/C nanoparticles were preferred. Maximum entrapment efficiency was observed in 5:1 F/C nanoparticle with and without cross linkers. To understand the structural morphology of nanoparticles electromagnetic magnification like SEM and TEM were taken in account.