Apostolos Zarros1, Stephanie D Boomkamp2
1 Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences, College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
2 Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
DOI: 10.4103/0976-9668.136293
Sir,
Despite the enormous technological and scientific progress that biomedical sciences have witnessed over the last decades, the automation of the majority of laboratory techniques used for the conduction of routine assays for industrial, academic, and clinical purposes and the commercialization of a significant number of diagnostic tests into commercially-available kits, a significant percentage of the basic biomedical research output is still set up and conducted in a non-automatic, analytical bench-based biochemical manner. [1],[2] Among these techniques, enzymatic analysis still plays a crucial role in pathophysiological and drug-screening basic and clinical research, as it reflects the configuration of the functionality of the studied enzymes. [3],[4],[5] Why would someone care for the overexpression of mRNA, the blotting of a monomer, or post-translational modification of a specific enzyme, if there would be no way to assess its actual activity: its ability to perform a specific reaction in relation to time? Thankfully, since the middle of the 20 th century, there has been remarkable progress in the field that was (not much later) defined as “Enzymology”, providing us with a very large number of specific methods that now allow us to determine with significant accuracy the activity of a plethora of enzymes in health and disease. [6] Moreover, it is also remarkable that (the majority of) these techniques are of significantly low-cost, require very basic laboratory equipment, and maintain unbeatable sensitivity dependent on the user’s accuracy of setting up and execution.Read more. . .
