| dc.description.abstract | Most of existing methods to monitor enzymatic activity in microbial culture cannot be applied directly to study
hydrolytic activities in aquatic environments. The low natural substrate concentrations as well as the sub optimal
in situ environmental conditions (unsuitable temperature, pH and the presence of interfering substrates) make the
existing laboratory methods often inadequate to measure enzymatic activity. Recently, molecular fluorosensors
are commonly used for sensitive assays involved in examining hydrolytic activity in aquatic environment in situ.
These allow for simpler and more rapid measurement of hydrolytic enzyme activity. Furthermore, the stability of
the artificial substrates produces very low fluorescence background and can be used without any loss in
sensitivity at high concentration (mM) that are sometimes required to measure enzyme saturation. | en_US |
