If the microorganisms can be grown in liquid medium, extracellular enzymes can be isolated from the medium. For isolation of intracellular enzymes, collect the cells by centrifugation and break them open by whatever technique is available to you (sonication, French Press, detergent lysis, etc.) to release the cytoplasm.

Decide whether crude extracts are sufficient for your purpose, or purification is needed. Purification of the enzyme is potentially a complex process requiring chromatography.  Do you have assays for the enzymes that would make it possible to follow the enzymes through the purification procedure? This is quite important.

If the microorganisms can be grown in liquid medium, extracellular enzymes can be isolated from the medium. For isolation of intracellular enzymes, collect the cells by centrifugation and break them open by whatever technique is available to you (sonication, French Press, detergent lysis, etc.) to release the cytoplasm.

Decide whether crude extracts are sufficient for your purpose, or purification is needed. Purification of the enzyme is potentially a complex process requiring chromatography.  Do you have assays for the enzymes that would make it possible to follow the enzymes through the purification procedure? This is quite important.

Hi there,

Centrifugation and filtration are the easiest techniques to separate media from cells and therefore to separte secreted proteins from cellular proteins.

Dear Arsha, my suggestion first screen your pure soil microorganims for the production of extracellular enzymes then you can purify them as explained by Dr. Shapiro. It is not an easy procedure. The following paper can help you. Good luck

Brockett, B.F.T., Prescott, C.E., Grayston, S.J., 2012. Soil moisture is the major factor influencing microbial community structure and enzyme activities across seen biogeoclimatic zones in western Canada. Soil Biol. Biochem. 44, 9–20.

Markovich NA, Kononova GL (2003) Lytic enzymes of Trichoderma and their role in plant defense from fungal diseases. Appl Biochem Microbiol 39:341–351

thank you everyone.

After o/n culture of microbes, then Centrifugation and filtration are the easiest techniques to isolate extracellular enzymes from soil microbes.

Adam B Shapiro I have got a yeast isolate which starts giving enzyme activity in the liquid growth media after 12h. Does the presence of enzyme in media confirms its extracellular nature or should I perform some more experiments so as to report it as an extracellular enzyme. The cell OD@600 keeps increasing till 48h and I have done plate count which doesn't show much increase or decrease in CFU count.

An alternative possibility is that the enzyme is intracellular but was released into the medium by a few dead cells. Check the gene sequence to see if there is a secretion signal sequence.

Adam B Shapiro the gene sequence does not have signal sequence. I have even amplified the gene using PCR reaction. Does this confirms that enzyme has got released into the medium by dead cells?

A further possibility to explore is unconventional protein secretion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconventional_protein_secretion

Article Pathways of Unconventional Protein Secretion