An Unfavourable Effect of Shaking on Fungal Cellulases

Abstract

SHAKING in some form or other is often resorted to during the incubation of enzymes with their substrates in order to obtain uniformity of results and a high rate of enzyme activity. In studies with insoluble cellulosic substrates this has been the usual practice among various workers. However, in an investigation of the cellulolytic activities of the culture filtrates of some fungi, preliminary experiments indicated that no advantage was to be gained by shaking, either in uniformity or in rate of enzyme activity, and that shaking might actually be harmful. Some of these experiments are summarized below; fuller details will be published elsewhere.