MEASUREMENT OF NITRATE REDUCTASE ACTIVITY

Abstract. During recent three decades interest for biomonitoring and ecological studies was rapidly growing. Therefore was necessary develop of new methods of analysis biochemical parameters whose allow quantify biological response of investigated organisms for environmen-tal factors. The main goal of this paper demonstrates optimal conditions for enzyme kinetics analysis conducted in the field in situ. Nitrate reductase activity is typically assayed in vivo by measuring nitrite production in tis-sue which has been vacuum infiltrated with buffered nitrate solution. For this study a nitrate reductase assay was adapted from a number of studies with own modifications of authors. Leaves of examined plants were collected on investigated plots and immediately placed into test tubes with buffer solution (potassium phosphate dibasic containing 0.6 % propanol-1) and evacuated in 0.33 atm. for 10 minutes. Then known amount of potassium nitrate was added, and the solution sample was analyzed in order to obtain a background level of nitrite. The foliage samples were incubated for 2 hours at 20 °C in darkness. Follow this procedure have given the most optimal conditions for reaction stability. After incubation the amount of synthesized nitrite was determined colorimetrically using sulfanilamide and N-(1-naphthyl)ethylenediamine dihydrochloride, measured at 540 nm. The foliage samples were oven-dried to obtain their dry mass. Level of nitrate reductase activity was calculated as the amount of nitrite produced in nmol per gram of dry mass of foliage tissue per hour. The result obtained during these research demonstrate the changes of nitrate reductase dynamics according to change of incubation parameters. Dynamics of enzyme activity with changes of solution pH and incubation temperature was presented. Installation for conducting infiltration process and construction of incubation cham-ber is also described in this paper