animal and poultry
waste management research:
a progress report

Optimizing the Proteolytic Degradation of Animal By-Products
The Animal and Poultry Waste Management Center

This funding provided a stipend and supply support for a graduate student involved in an effort to develop a method of turning poultry feathers and perhaps other animal waste products into a low-cost, highly digestible protein source for use as an ingredient in livestock feed. North Carolina State University scientists have identified a bacterium called Bacillus licheniformis PWD-1 that breaks down poultry feathers into feather-lysate, a protein that can be used as an animal-feed ingredient. The bacterium produces an enzyme, called keratinase, that breaks down feathers. Scientists are now working to optimize production of keratinase to produce the most effective degradation possible. The student whose work was funded by this grant was involved in determining the best fermentation conditions for degrading feathers. Additional protease enzymes capable of degrading feather keratin were studied and evaluated. While scientists have worked only with feathers so far, keratinase breaks down hard-to-degrade proteins such as collagen, elastin and keratin, so it may be possible to use the enzyme to quickly decompose livestock carcasses to produce a valuable protein product.

Funding: $20,000
Source: North Carolina Agricultural Research Service
Status: Completed

Principal Investigator: Dr. Eric S. Miller, associate professor, Microbiology, North Carolina State University, phone: (919) 515-7922, fax: (919) 515-7867, email: ESM@MBIO.NCSU.EDU

Collaborators: Dr. Jason C.H. Shih, professor, Poultry Science, North Carolina State University; Kristie Falk, graduate student, North Carolina State University