A method for measuring activities of acid phosphatases separated by acrylamide gel electrophoresis

Methods for measuring the activities of acid phosphatases with the same substrate, alpha-naphthyl acid phosphate, both before and after acrylamide gel electrophoresis are described. The gel assay, which involves elution of the precipitated dye complex, can be used to measure the length of linear reaction rates of the enzymes separated in gels. It is possible with the use of these methods both to determine the effect of electrophoresis on the activity of acid phosphatases and to correlate the amount of precipitated dye with the area under the peak on a densitometric tracing of the same band.