Fluorometric determination of xanthine and hypoxanthine in tissue

A method was developed to determine the total content of the oxypurines, xanthine and hypoxanthine, in animal tissues. The developed method was constructed mainly from the following successive steps: (1) conversion of the oxypurines to uric acid and hydrogen peroxidase by xanthine oxidase; (2) decomposition of the hydrogen peroxide by catalase and subsequent inactivation of this enzyme; (3) fluorometric measurement of the uric acid based on the coupled enzyme reaction of uricase and peroxidase. In applying this method to a sample containing uric acid, preliminary removal of this uric acid was necessary and this was carried out by treating the sample with uricase, followed by subsequent inactivation of this enzyme. The present method was more specific than the existing fluorometric method and permitted to measure the total content of the oxypurines (as low as 1 nmol) without mutual separation of them. The actual application of this method to the rat liver was demonstrated together with the method to prepare the tissue sample for the assay.