New advancement of enzymatic methodologies in clinical laboratory analysis

✍ Scribed by Dr. Yasushi Kasahara

• Book ID: 102878701
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1994
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 652 KB
• Volume: 8
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0887-8013
• DOI: 10.1002/jcla.1860080108

✦ Synopsis

Nature and all living creatures differ from artificial functions in their ability to manipulate events precisely and efficiently through various specific recognitions between enzyme and substrate, hormone and receptor, antigen and antibody, and so on. More important, natural phenomena do not usually engender mismatches. Science can benefit by borrowing from nature. Using enzymes as analytical tools is a good example of this process and remarkable research improvements have been made in various physicochemical assay procedures.

In the early 1970s, a unique assay for the enzymatic determination of cholesterol was developed (1). This assay does not require the manipulation of hazardous chemical reagents, and shows enhanced performance of shorter assay time compared to the conventional chemical assays.

New methodologies with enzymes have also contributed a great deal to the fields of clinical laboratory and basic research in medicine. These methods include the enzyme assay, the immunochemical assay, various ligand assays, and molecular analysis of genes (DNAIRNA) .

CLASSIFICATION OF ENZYME-LINKED ASSAYS

The following methods are referred to as enzyme-linked assays. For convenience, they have been grouped into four categories and are described in broad terms.

Determination of Enzyme Activity

This method involves colorimetric or spectrophotometric measurement of enzyme activity, such as esterases and peptidases with p-hydroxybenzoyl derivative as substrates.

Enzymatic Determination of Low Molecular Weight

Compounds

This method involves the detection of measurements of low molecular weight substances using appropriate enzymes. This enzymatic method is more easily performed than other methods which use tedious bioassay or physicochemical procedures.