Protease measurement

This contribution presents a real-time knowledge-based system for the supervision of a multi channel FIA system applied in the on-line bioprocess monitoring of glucose, maltose, polysaccharide, ammonium, and alkaline protease measurements. In this contribution the special conditions of fault detection in a multi channel FIA system are explained. Examples of typical faults are given to explain how on-line symbolic knowledge processing can be combined with numerical analysis of data to perform a fast and reliable fault detection and fault diagnosis. 

Like other proteins, enzymes are potential allergens. In addition, proteases may act as skin and eye irritants. However, during the production and handling of industrial enzymes, the occupational health risks entailed by these properties can be avoided by protective measures, and by the form in which... 

The pH dependence of HIV-1 protease has been assessed by measuring the apparent inhibition constant for a synthetic substrate analog (b). The data are consistent with the catalytic involvement of ionizable groups with pK values of 3.3 and 5.3. Maximal enzymatic activity occurs in the pH range between these two values. On the basis of the accumulated kinetic and structural data on HIV-1 protease, these pK values have been ascribed to the... 

The quantification of kinins in human tissues or body fluids has been limited due to the inherent difficulties in accurately measuring the concentration of ephemeral peptides. Today HPLC-based and RIA/capture-ELA measurements are established to determine kinins in human plasma, liquor or mine. Serine protease inhibitors need to be added to prevent rapid degradation of the kinins in vitro during sample preparation. Kinins and their degradation products have been studied in various biological milieus such as plasma/ serum, urine, joint fluids, kidney, lung and skeletal muscle [2]. Under normal conditions, the concentration of kinins in these compartments is extremely low for... 

Interestingly plasmepsin inhibitors with a good activity (low nM) were obtained with no measurable affinity to the human protease enzyme. 

A protease-specific model has also been reported in which a replication-defective adenovirus encoding an NS3 protease-SEAP fusion protein is injected into mouse tail veins, resulting in expression of the fusion protein in the liver [82, 83]. Protease activity can be detected both by measuring activity of liberated SEAP or by protease-induced liver damage. Protease activity was found to be reduced by administration of protease inhibitors. This model can be used to show that candidate inhibitors have adequate pharmacokinetic properties in mice to function in the intended target organ, but it is not a true disease model. 

Table 5.4 Hypothetical experiment measuring the IC50 values of a competitive inhibitor for HIV aspartyl protease and for human renin, at a fixed substrate concentration of 50 iM...

A different strategy for measuring protease activity is based on the property of xanthene dyes to form H-type dimers (see Sect. 6.2.3) when they are in close proximity. These dimers are accompanied with a characteristic quenching of their fluorescence and, particularly for rhodamines, with a blue shift in the absorption spectrum [121, 122]. The probe D-NorFES-D designed to measure activity of elastase in HL-60 cells consists of an undecapeptide derivatized with one tetramethylrhodamine dye on each side. The sequence contains proline residues to create a bent structure and bring the two fluoro-phores in close proximity. Intact D-NorFES-D shows 90% of its fluorescence quenched plus a blue shift of the absorption spectrum. After addition of the serine protease elastase, an increase in the fluorescence and a bathochromic shift of the absorption spectrum is observed, resulting in an increase in the emission ratio [80],... 

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