Enzymes, microbial sterility testing

Several enzymes have important therapeutic and other medical or pharmaceutical uses (Table 25.3). In this section, those enzymes used therapeutically will be described, with section 4 discnssing the applications of microbially derived enzymes for antibiotic inactivation in sterility testing and diagnostic assays. 

Similarly, crayfish reduce feeding and movement when exposed to hemolymph of damaged conspecifics (Acquistapace et al. 2005). Hemolymph loses its bioactivity when tested 24 h after its extraction, but activity is maintained if it is treated with the antioxidant L-ascorbic acid. This suggests that crayfish alarm molecules are degraded by oxidation. Microbial activity alone did not rapidly degrade the alarm substances because hemolymph activity still declined after 24 h even if extracted and preserved in sterile conditions. However, when hemolymph molecules of less than 5 kDa were fractionated from hemolymph, they retained strong bioactivity even after 24 h at 20°C, possibly because the 5 kDa fractioning eliminates enzymes. It seems probable that alarm substances may be... 

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