title: Scaling down the analysis of environmental processes: monitoring enzyme activity in natural substrates on a millimeter resolution scale.
abstract: Natural environments often show high levels of spatial heterogeneity. With a methodology based on the immobilization of fluorescent substrates, the distribution of extracellular enzymes can be studied at a 2.3-mm resolution with a detection limit of 1.8 nmol · h(-1) · cm(-2). The method is applicable to environmental samples such as wood, litter, soil, or fungal colonies.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Environmental Microbiology, Institute of Microbiology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, v.v.i., Prague, Czech Republic. baldrian@biomed.cas.cz
authors.forename: Petr
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Baldrian
authors.forename: Tomás
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Vetrovsky
mesh_terms: D004783:Environmental Microbiology; D004798:Enzymes / Q000032:analysis*; D008828:Microbiological Techniques / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D004798:Enzymes