Plant-eders:
I'm looking for good plant tissue sources of alkaline phosphatase. I
think I saw something about this in the newsgroup some time ago but don't
have the message(s).
I want to develop an investigation that allows Intro Bio students to
extract a stable enzyme from tissue with low-cost equipment (i.e. blender)
and determine rate of product formation using the chart recorder output of
a Spectronic 21 (visible wavelengths only) fed into an analog-to-digital
converter and then into a computer. Alkaline phosphatase would be ideal.
It is stable, and the nitrophenol product is yellow at alkaline pH. The
enzyme is used as an indicator of virus infection of leaf tissue, and
Arabidopsis apparently has some activity, but neither of these sources are
convenient for us. I prefer uninfected leaves of readily available plants
such as corn, green bean, spinach; storage tissues such as potato, or
hydrated seeds such as corn, bean, and so forth.
Any suggestions?
Bob
Robert C. Hodson
Department of Biological Sciences
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716
(302)831-8440
