Enzyme assays with boronic acid appended bipyridinium salts

In-vitro fluorescent enzyme assays have been developed for sucrose phosphorylase (SPO) and phosphoglucomutase (PGM). These assays make use of a selective carbohydrate sensing system that detects the unlabeled enzymatic products fructose and glucose-6-phosphate. The system comprises 8-hydroxypyrene-1,3,6-trisulfonic acid trisodium salt as the reporter unit and boronic acid appended viologens as selective receptors with working ranges from 70 mu M to 1.0 mM for fructose (SPO) and 190 mu M to 2.0 mM for glucose-6-phosphate (PGM). The change in fluorescence can be converted into product concentration, allowing initial reaction velocities and Michaelis-Menten kinetics to be calculated. The assays are also carried out in multiwell plate formats, making them suitable for high-throughput screening of enzyme inhibitors. Rapid PGM inhibition screening is demonstrated with EDTA and LiCl. The PGM assay can also be used for enzyme quantification with a detection limit of 50 ng mL(-1). (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.