Pep-Lyse
A protease (also termed peptidase or proteinase) is any enzyme that conducts proteolysis, that is, begins protein catabolism by hydrolysis of the peptide bonds that link amino acids together in the polypeptide chain forming the protein.
Proteases occur naturally in all organisms. These enzymes are involved in a multitude of physiological reactions from simple digestion of food proteins to highly regulated cascades (e.g., the blood-clotting cascade, the complement system, apoptosis pathways, and the invertebrate prophenoloxidase-activating cascade).
Pep-Lyse is a novel method to detect and measure protease activities using a high-density array on which hundreds of substrates with fluorochrome and fluorescent quencher flanking a protease recognition site are laid for high-throughput screening or facile evaluation of protease function (figure).
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