ENZYME PATTERNS IN HUMAN TISSUES. II. GLYCOLYTIC ENZYME PATTERNS IN NONMALIGNANT HUMAN TISSUES.

Abstract

Summary Enzyme patterns for the glycolytic enzymes in several different human tissues are presented, and their validity is discussed. Since enzyme activities were measured at the same pH under optimal conditions, they are directly comparable to one another. Factors involved in the evaluation of the norm for enzymic activities in human tissues are discussed. Although absolute enzyme activities in terms of units per gram of wet weight of tissue or other biochemical baselines varied widely in some tissues, the activities of these relative to one another varied much less. Glyceraldehyde phosphate dehydrogenase proved to be an analytically and biologically useful standard of reference and furnished patterns of enzyme activities some of which fell into groups of reasonably constant proportions. The significance of “constant proportion groups” in comparing malignant and nonmalignant human tisues is discussed.