Laundry performance of subtilisin proteases.

Effective laundry protease performance against susceptible stains depends upon both the enzyme itself and the environment in which it must work. In order to technically design superior laundry proteases, a model for protease's mechanism of action in detergents was developed which has been substantiated through-the-wash. While evaluation of this model and/or a given protease's effectiveness could be judged by a variety of methods, the utility of using visual wash performance comparisons, analytical, and stain characterization studies is described. Finally, data comparing the performance of wild type Subtilisin proteases with mutants designed via the projected model are given, demonstrating possible utility of the system.