Patent 7179630 was granted and assigned to Novozymes A/S on February, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The present invention relates to thermostable proteases having an amino acid sequence which homologous to the amino acid sequence of proteases derived from Nocardiopsis, and the production thereof by wild-type and recombinant host cells including transgenic plants and non-human transgenic animals. The proteases are effective in animal feed, in particular fish feed, and detergents. The proteases are capable of degrading the soybean Bowman-Birk inhibitor, and other antinutritional factors such as soybean agglutinin and the Kunitz trypsin inhibitor, as well as the isolated soy storage proteins glycinin and beta-conglycinin. Characteristic structural features of relevance for the thermostability of these proteases of peptidase family S2A or S1E are disclosed.