Study on Keratinophilic and Keratinolytic Fungi Isolated from Birds’ Feathers and Animal Hairs

K. Moorthy, I. Prasanna, S. Vimalan, V. Lavanya, A.T. Selvi, T. Mekala and N. Thajuddin

¹Department of Microbiology, Vivekananda College of Arts and Sciences for Women, Elayampalyam, Tiruchengode - 637 205 India.

²Department of Microbiology, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, TamilNadu India.

Corresponding Author E-mail: moormicro@gmail.com 

ABSTRACT: A total of 75 bird feathers and 22 animal hair samples (97 samples) were processed for invitro degradation of keratin. Both keratinophilic and keratinolytic fungi were identified and among them, 22 fungal genera were isolated which represented about 27 different species. All the 27 isolates were keratinophilic and among them 12 were found to have keratinolytic activity. Hen feather samples showed a high incidence of about 55 fungal isolates, followed by kaadai (Wild chicken) samples with 27 isolates, rabbit hair samples with 19, turkey and pigeon each with 18 isolates, 12 isolates were obtained from the goat hair samples, cow hair samples with 5 isolates and cat and dog hair with 2 isolates respectively. Among the 158 isolated fungal species, the genus Aspergillus was the found to be predominant. Among them, Aspergillus niger was predominant with 38 isolates followed by Fusarium spp. with 19 isolates and Scopulariopsis spp. was found to be in 11 isolates.

KEYWORDS: Keratinophilic; keratinolytic; hair bait; birds feathers; animal hairs

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