Saccharification of waste paper with cellulase from garden snails (Cornu aspersum)

Waste cellulose, a glucose-based biopolymer, is the most abundant global organic substance that could be developed as a resource for bioproduct development. Cellulase, a multi-component enzyme system, has the ability to bioconvert cellulose into glucose a fermentable sugar, and this process has been performed with the hydrolytic enzyme isolated from the garden snail (Cornu aspersum). During this process, various waste paper materials such as office paper, foolscap paper, filter paper, newspaper, brown envelope paper and advertising paper from retailers, Woolworths and Pick’n Pay, have been saccharified with cellulase from garden snails. The various paper materials exhibited different susceptibilities for cellulase-catalysed bioconversion into glucose as determined by the structural components of the paper materials which are cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Filter paper was determined to be the substrate with the highest resistance, with all masses, against cellulase activity in terms of percentage saccharification, while Woolworths paper exhibited the highest susceptibility for cellulase activity when a medium mass of paper was incubated, while foolscap paper offered the least resistance against the cellulase activity at highest mass to enzyme ratio. All the paper materials have been bioconverted into different relative amounts of glucose by the garden snail cellulase, and this sugar could serve as a resource for bioproduct development.