* To whom all correspondence should be addressed. Tel.: +91-1262-393398; Fax-91-1262-274133 E-mail: pratyoosh.shukla@gmail.com JOURNAL OF PURE AND APPLIED MICROBIOLOGY, Sept. 2016. Vol. 10(3), p. 2225-2230 Enhanced Xylanase Production from Thermomyces lanuginosus NCIM 1374/ DSM 28966 using Statistical Analysis Smriti Shrivastava 1 , Vishal Kumar 2 , Mehak Baweja 2 and Pratyoosh Shukla 2 * 1 Amity Institute of Biotechnology, Amity University Uttar Pradesh, Sector 125, NOIDA, Uttar Pradesh, 201303, India. 2 Enzyme Technology and Protein Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Microbiology, Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak-124001, Haryana, India. (Received: 13 January 2016; accepted: 19 April 2016) Extracellular xylanase production by Thermomyces lanuginosus (NCIM-1374/ DSM 28966) could be enhanced using statistical tools of Response surface methodology. Optimized process parameters (pH: 6.3; temperature: 52°C; fermentation time: 108 h; substrate concentration: 1.8% wheat bran) were obtained using ANNOVA. Saccharification process under optimized condition enhanced extracellular xylanase production from 10012 IU/L/min to 12060 IU/L/min. Experimental design showed high correlation between predicted and experiment R-squared values, and analysis of variance had computed F- value of 16.57 with a very low P-value indicating the statistical significance of the quadratic model that can be used to navigate the design space with an adequate precision measure and could optimize the process for high level xylanase production. Thermomyces lanuginosus NCIM1374/ DSM 28966 is an indigenous strain isolated in our laboratory and its xylanase has unique capacity of hydrolyzing xylan to xylose. In the present study we were able to enhance extracellular production of this swift and differently acting enzyme. Keywords: Thermomyces lanuginosus, xylanase, Response surface methodology, Quadratic model, Box- Behnken Design. Hydrolysis of xylan (hemicellulose, second most abundant polymer in plant cell wall) is majorly catalyzed by xylanases followed by several other xylanolytic enzymes that includes â- d-xylosidase and a variety of debranching enzymes i.e. á-l-arabinofuranosidases, á-glucuronidases, acetyl esterases etc. 1-5 . Xylanase are produced by wide range of bacteria 6-8 , fungi 9, 10 , actinomycetes and yeast 11-13 , among these fungi are significantly higher producers 14 and non cellulytic fungi, found in self heating masses of organic debris are major contributors. T. lanuginosus is one such non cellulytic fungi reported to produce cellulase free xylanases 15, 16 . Xylanases find potential application in pulp and paper industries, baking industries, food and feed, breweries etc. 17-20 and are produced at large scale by submerged and solid state fermentation 21 . In order to reduce cost of production, agricultural wastes rich in xylan (wheat bran, corn cob, sugarcane Bagasse etc) are utilized as substrates1 7, 22-23 and all these processes are optimized by generic or computed statistical tool at laboratory scale. Response surface methodology is a statistical technique collectively used for designing experiments, plotting graphs and finally it also helps to evaluate the effect of various factors in the experiments and defines an optimal condition. In the present report we have described optimization of process parameter for xylanase