Determination of molecular mass, Stokes' radius, frictional coefficient and isomer-type of non-denatured proteins by time-dependent pore gradient gel electrophoresis.

Molecular mass, Stoke's radius, frictional coefficient and isomer-type of non-denatured proteins can be obtained by time-dependent gradient gel electrophoresis by evaluating the resulting data using a two-step mathematical procedure. Provided a histochemical staining procedure is available to locate the position of an enzyme in the gel, crude cell extracts can be used for estimating their molecular size properties. The computation of molecular properties of non-denatured proteins is demonstrated for isozymes of aspartate aminotransferase (EC 2.6.1.1), peroxidase (EC 1.11.1.42) and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (EC 1.1.1.49) from current-year needles of spruce. The resulting data as well as those which were calculated for esterase (EC 3.1.1.1), glutamate dehydrogenase (EC 1.4.1.4), isocitrate dehydrogenase (EC 1.4.1.42), and shikimate dehydrogenase (EC 1.1.1.25) are in accordance with those reported in the literature. The method described may be applied to various scientific areas such as genetics or environmental pollution. It could be shown here that current-year needles of injured spruce (damage class 3) contained two more peroxidase isozymes and one more glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase isozyme than those from non-injured trees. These differences may mark two genotypes of spruce of different susceptibilities towards present-day air and soil pollutants.