Effect of dilution on carboxymethylcellulase and xylanase assays

It has been demonstrated that the dilution of samples prior to the carboxymethylcellulase and xylanase assays causes serious discrepancies in the numerical values obtained for the enzyme activities. Even when the sample is assayed with the identical procedure, one could obtain different numerical values of the enzyme activity U depending on how much this sample has been diluted before the enzyme assay. Two crude commercial cellulase samples of Aspergillus niger and Trichoderma viride as well as the culture filtrate of our newly isolated acidophilic fungus have been used for the demonstration. An empirical method for reporting the cellulolytic activity by taking into account this dilution effect is proposed.