A kinetic colorimetric assay of gamma-glutamyltransferase

We have explored a kinetic colorimetric method for measuring gamma-glutamyltransferase (EC 2.3.2.2) activity in serum, using L-gamma-glutamyl-3,5-dibromo-4-hydroxyanilide and glycylglycine as donor and acceptor substrates. The released product, 3,5-dibromo-4-hydroxyaniline, reacts with 2,5-dimethylphenol to produce a blue quinone monoimine in the presence of ascorbate oxidase (EC 1.10.3.3). This dye has peak absorption at 610 nm, whereas the donor substrate shows negligible absorption throughout the visible spectrum. The reaction can be run with all the reagents in a single working solution with serum as starter, or with the substrate solution as starting reagent. The sample/reagent volume ratio is 1:24. Adaptation of the method to several automated instruments gave good precision in all cases. Comparison with a method in which L-gamma-glutamyl-3-carboxy-4-nitroanilide is the donor substrate showed good correlation of results (r greater than or equal to 0.987). The dynamic range of the method exceeds the upper limits of the reference intervals for men (9-33 U/L) and women (8-25 U/L) by at least 18-fold.