Zymolyase, available from Amsbio, is a lytic enzyme mixture that offers superior and broad-based biological activity across several genera of fungi, including yeast.
Purified from culture fluid of Arthrobacter luteus, Zymolyase offers strong lytic activity against living yeast cell-walls to produce protoplast or spheroplast of various strains of yeast cells.
In independent tests Zymolyase has been proven to be a more effective reagent for yeast cell-wall degradation for protoplast formation compared with Lyticase and Glusulase.
The high activity of Zymolyase is attributed to its composition, as it is a mixture of lytic enzymes as opposed to a purified enzyme.
Zymolyase contains four enzymes, each of which attack a different cell-wall polymer.
Generally, the yeast cell-wall consists of four major components, namely branched beta 1->3 glucans, substituted beta 1->3 glucans, glycoproteins and mannans.
Zymolyase includes enzymes that act on each of these polymers.
The principal enzyme is beta-1, 3 glucan laminaripentaohydrolase, which fragments cell-wall glucans into pentamers.
The second key enzyme is beta-1, 3 glucanase, which hydrolyses glucans to glucose, thus further degrading the cell wall.
Present in lesser amounts are protease and mannose, which act on glycoproteins and mannans respectively.
The combined action of these four enzymes facilitates unmatched protoplast formation efficiency by the Zymolyase mixture.
Growing numbers of researchers using yeast to study biological systems (especially genetics), and using yeast as an expression system for growth factors and therapeutics are turning to Zymolyase as their lytic enzyme reagent of choice.
Amsbio offers two preparations of Zymolyase: Zymolyase-20T and -100T, with lytic activity of 20,000units/g and 100,000units/g respectively.
