Aspergillus oryzae 3.042 was mutagenized
using atmospheric and room-temperature plasma (ARTP) technology to
enhance its salt-tolerant proteases activity. Compared to the starting
strain, mutant H8 subjected to 180 s of ARTP treatment exhibited excellent
genetic stability (15 generations), growth rate, and significantly
increased activities of neutral proteases, alkaline proteases, and
aspartyl aminopeptidase during fermentation. Mutant H8 significantly
enhanced the contents of 1–5 kDa peptides, aspartic acid, serine,
threonine, and cysteine in soy sauce by 16.61, 7.69, 17.30, 8.61,
and 45.00%, respectively, but it had no effects on the contents of
the other 14 free amino acids (FAAs) due to its slightly enhanced
acidic proteases activity. Analyses of transcriptional expressions
of salt-tolerant alkaline protease gene (AP, gi: 217809) and aspartyl
aminopeptidase gene (AAP, gi: 6165646) indicated
that their expression levels were increased by approximately 30 and
27%, respectively. But no mutation was found in the sequences of AP and AAP expression cassettes, suggesting
that the increased activities of proteases in mutant H8 should be
partially attributed to the increased expression of proteases. ARTP
technology showed great potential in enhancing the activities of salt-tolerant
proteases from A. oryzae.