Review of lignocellulolytic enzyme activity analyses and scale-down to microplate-based assays

With the increasing use of enzymes in environmental applications, there is a need for analytical methods adapted to large factorial experiments. Existing reference methods are chemical and labor intensive and unsuitable to analyze in parallel a large number of samples. Based on an extensive literature review and on experimental results, this work compares reference and microplate adapted methods to define the most adequate filter paper, carboxymethylcellulase, β-glucosidase and xylanase activity tests. In the adapted methods, the total reaction volume was reduced from 2.2-24.5 mL to 0.21-0.24 mL. Statistical analysis of the activities measured on enzyme mixtures by applying the 96-well plate reduced methods showed that they were not significantly different to the activities obtained with reference tests.