Alpha-amylase

Technical Data

Type of Protein	Enzyme
Protein name	Alpha-amylase
Companies producing this protein	DSM Advanced Enzymes Technologies Antozyme Biotech AB enzymes Novonesis
Function (dairy alternative, colorant, texture, taste...)	Degradation of starch (Fernandes, 2018)
Target application (cheese, infant formula, meat...)	Used in brewing, baking & confectionary, production of glucose syrups & fruit juice production (Raveendran et al., 2018)
Purity requirement/purification values	Has been purified at 96% with a simple, easy to scale-up procedure (Lončar et al., 2015)
Techno-functional properties	Breaks α-1, 4-glucosidic linkages in starch, producing dextrin (Ali et al., 2025)
Nutritional properties	No real nutritional properties itself, the main nutritional properties come from the degradation of starch (see target application).
Advantages	Thermostable variants available (Ali et al., 2025) The addition of α-amylase to dough results an enhanced rate of fermentation and reduction of the viscosity of the dough, which results in improvements in the volume and texture of the product. It also generates additional sugar in the dough, which improves the taste, crust color, and toasting qualities of the bread. α-Amylases also have an antistaling effect, and improve the softness retention of baked goods, which increases the shelf-life of these products (Meena et al., 2018).
Challenges/risk factors	Production of branched maltooligosaccharides may lead to undesired gumminess in bread (S. H. Park et al., 2017) Suffers from product inhibition: one of the generated products, maltose, inhibits the reaction of α-amylase (S. H. Park et al., 2017)

Escherichia coli

Corynebacterium glutamicum

Streptomyces lividans

Lactiplantibacillus plantarum

Bacillus subtilis