ABSTRACT
The technique of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) has become a major factor in the analysis of biochemical, pharmaceutical, environmental, and other inorganic and organic compounds. Enzymes are rather large biopolymers that catalyze the reactions necessary for life itself. They have a number of characteristics, such as an optimum pH for catalysis, that influence their use in chromatographic derivatization schemes. The chapter provides an objective of the principles involved in developing a tandem HPLC- solid-phase reactor-enzyme system. The molecular activity associated with catalysis is complex and in fact is not well understood for most enzymes. Clearly, one of the objectives of immobilizing an enzyme would be to extend its useful lifetime. Unfortunately, due to the complexity of two-phase reaction kinetics, it is unclear in most cases whether this goal has been achieved. Enzyme stabilization is a major goal of both protein chemistry and enzyme immobilization.
