Automated fluorometric determination of free and total tryptophan in plasma

✍ Scribed by George A. Mason; James A. Diez; Harry H. Dutton; George K. Summer

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1978
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 478 KB
• Volume: 84
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-2697
• DOI: 10.1016/0003-2697(78)90504-3

✦ Synopsis

We have developed a sensitive automated fluorometric method based upon the manual procedure of Denckla and Dewey [(1967) J. Lab. Clin. Med. 69, 160-1691 for determining both free and total tryptophan in plasma. Free tryptophan is measured in a series of increasingly diluted aliquots of a sample of plasma after tryptophan bound to albumin is removed by continuous-flow dialysis. Free and total tryptophan are then derived from Scatchard plots of the data. The method can be used for nutritional assessments, clinical investigation of behavioral disorders in which serotonin is implicated in the pathogenesis, and studies on tryptophan transport and metabolism.