A continuous-flow detector for cytochrome P-450 and cytochrome P-420

A spectrophotometric detector for automatically monitoring levels of cytochrome P-450 and cytochrome P-420 in chromatographic column effluents is described. Levels of cytochrome P-450 and P-420 as low as 30 pmol/ml can be detected above an absorbance background noise equivalent to 10 pmol/ml of these heme proteins. Spectra and the concentrations of cytochrome P-450 and cytochrome P-420 are determined every 5 sec. The automatic flow reactor and detector offer the following advantages over existing manual methods: (i) greatly reduced analysis time, (ii) measurement of a larger number of independent samples than is practical manually, (iii) simultaneous measurement of cytochrome P-450 and its degradation product cytochrome P-420 immediately after elution from the column, thus avoiding further sample degradation, and (iv) greatly increased accuracy and threshold resolution due to highly reproducible reaction conditions and constant optics.