| Abstract: Background: Proteases are the most important industrial enzymes with diverse applica-tions in bacteria, such as Bacillus, commonly used to produce protease for industrial purposes. Pro-teases are commercially exploited in a larger scale, especially in pharmaceutical, food, leather, anddetergent industries.Objective: The present study sought toscreen and optimize protease enzyme activity produced bylocal bacteria.Methods: The effects of incubation time, temperature, and initial pH were investigated to improvethe extracellular protease enzyme activity by two bacteria, named Bacillus subtilis strain DAR andAlkalihalobacillus hwajinpoensis strain 3NB. These two isolates have already been isolated andregistered from Iran.Results: The results indicated that the optimum incubation time for the protease activity in B. Sub-tilis strain DAR is 36 h in contrast to 40 h in Alkalihalobacillus hwajinpoensis strain 3NB. The opti-mum incubation temperatures for enzyme activity for B. Subtilis and Alkalihalobacillus hwajin-poensisare 50°C and 40°C, respectively. Optimum pH values for protease activity of both bacteriaare 8.Conclusion: The optimum incubation time, pH, and temperature were investigated for better pro-tease activity. Further studies are recommended to improve protease activity by changing enzymesubstrates |