Effect of temperature towards tyrosinase enzyme immobilised on magnetic chitosan

Bisphenol A (BPA), a compound that is traceable in wastewater and packaging material can bring detrimental effect to human health when it is consumed. BPA has been linked to particular diseases related to endocrine system, such as breast cancer among women and defective reproductive system among men. In this modernised world, there is limitation of method to detect the presence of the compound in the environment as the available techniques are usually expensive, cannot be conducted insitu, and require experienced technicians to operate effectively. In this study, the tyrosinase enzyme was employed to identify the presence of the BPA compound and to degrade the BPA into its monomer because the method of preparation is simple and relatively cheap compared to other existing techniques used to identify the presence of BPA in a solution. In this research, only effect of temperature was studied towards the ability of the immobilised tyrosinase enzyme to degrade the phenolic compound. The tyrosinase enzyme was immobilised onto magnetic chitosan via simple crosslinking process with the aid of glutaraldehyde as the crosslinking medium. Other parameters that influence the enzyme behaviour, like pH, hydrophobicity and electrostatic interactions, were not investigated due to time constraints and lack of necessary equipment and assumed to be similar from one set of experiment to another by maintaining stirring rate, amount of chemicals used in preparation steps. The percentage of biodegradation of BPA using immobilised tyrosinase enzyme on magnetic chitosan compound under different temperatures ( T = 20,25,30,35,40°C ) was determined using spectrophotometry analysis at 465nm of wavelength. Based on the results obtained, the tyrosinase managed to degrade highest amount of BPA at temperature, T = 20°C.