Urea has become the most used nitrogen fertilizer in the world, accounting for approximately 40% of the totally nitrogen supply. Its market share is increasing since it is the least expensive form of solid nitrogen fertilizer and its high nutrient content (46%N). Much of the nitrogen in fertilizer comes from urea, which bacteria degrade into ammonia and CO2 using urease 1-9 . Its efficiency is however decreased by losses of nitrogen through ammonia volatilization by urease enzyme catalyzing it. In 1926 James Sumner showed that urease is a protein. Urease is found in bacteria, yeast and several higher plants. Urease is significant in the history of Enzymology as the first enzyme to be purified and crystallized. The present study was undertaken to study the isolation of the enzyme and the effect of various activators and inhibitors on the activity of the enzyme.
Negative modulators, Urease, Nitrogen fertilizer, Horse Gram
© The Author(s) 2009. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.