Development of diced electrophoresis gel assay for screening disease-related enzymatic activities

Abstract

We have been developing techniques for monitoring the specified enzymatic activities with the use of small molecular fluorescent substrates (molecules that become fluorescent upon cleavage by specific enzymes) that enable highly sensitive detection of the targeted activities. Based on the techniques, we have developed the novel methodology to search for cell-type-specific and disease-related enzymatic activities by comprehensively evaluating enzymatic activities in bio-samples and identifying the enzymes that metabolize specified substrates. With those techniques, we have successfully characterized several disease-related alternations of enzymatic functions from enzymome (total of active enzymes in living systems).