THE QUANTITATIVE HISTOCHEMISTRY OF BRAIN II. ENZYME MEASUREMENTS

Abstract

It was desired to measure a variety of enzyme activities in very small amounts of brain (10 y wet weight or less) as part of a study of the quantitative histochemistry of brain. Existing analytica, methods were insufficiently sensitive. Accordingly, suitable microprocedures were elaborated for measuring acid and alkaline phosphatase, adenosinetriphosphatase, cholinesterase, aldolase, and fumarase on the desired scale. With the resultant methods certain of the enzymes may be measured in less than 1 y of brain (wet weight). Similarly sensitive procedures for lactic, malic, and glutamic dehydrogenase will be presented elsewhere.’ Robins et al. have published a comparable method for nucleoside phosphorylase (1).