Enzyme Systems and Enzyme Conjugates for Solid-Phase Elisa

Enzymes are proteins that catalyze most chemical transformations in biological systems; their catalysis is extraordinarily efficient and specific. 1 , 2 The rate of nonenzymatic-catalyzed reactions are enhanced 100 billion-fold by enzymes. 1 Because enzymes can catalyze the transformation of 1 million substrate molecules into products within 1 min, their enhancing properties have been used to advantage in biochemical analysis. 3-7 Let us use Escherichia coli β-galactosidase as an illustrative example. Under saturating substrate concentration, the rate of the enzyme-catalyzed reaction (v) can be used as a measure of the enzyme concentration ([Enzyme]) and is governed by the equation