Does anyone know the role of bicarbonate in acetylcholinesterase activity? Every assay method that follows Ellman, et al. (1961) uses either bicarbonate/carbonate buffer in one of the reagents, or tiny amounts of bicarbonate are added to a Tris buffer system, but no publication I can find indicates why this is so. Will the Ellman assay work without bicarbonate?
Adam B Shapiro
Some enzymes require bicarbonate because the active site contains a transiently carboxylated lysine side chain, changing the charge from + to -. I don't know whether this is the case for acetylcholinesterase.
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