Megazyme have just released 7 new insoluble substrate products,which display enhanced sensitivity over existing insoluble substrates and are a mix between finely milled AZCL products and RedCL product.
Key Points:
- Insoluble dyed substrates can be used to detect enzymatic activities in both agar plate and microtiter plate assays.
- High throughput screening of multiple samples
- Accurate
- Cost effective
- Easy to prepare
The substrates as traditionally supplied (e.g. AZCL-Amylose) are granular and quickly settle from substrate suspensions, making routine pipetting non-reproducible. Also, when added to agar plates, they rapidly settle to the bottom of the plate before the agar sets.Consequently, the substrates are not ideal in their current form for their intended uses
To resolve this limitation, Megazyme has investigated alternative ways to dry and mill these substrates to produce materials of a finer particle size which resolve many of the identified limitations. In the preparation of agar plates, the molten agar takes some minutes to solidify and during this time, settling of the insoluble substrate occurs, even with the finer particle size. In order to prevent this, we have evaluated various additives to increase the viscosity of the agar preparations and thus reduce “settling” problems. It was found that xanthan gum (0.5% w/v) effectively prevents settling. As a result, the substrate particles remain closer to the gel surface, resulting in an increased sensitivity of the assay.
Products can be viewed on the Megazyme website.
Contact us at info@deltagen.flywheelsites.com for pricing and availability.