Studies on the Purification and Characterization of Soybean Esterase, and Its Sensitivity to Organophosphate and Carbamate Pesticides

Soybean esterase, a cholinesterase-like enzyme, was purified by differential centrifugation firstly, then, ammonium sulfate precipitation, dialysis, and finally, DEAE-cellulose-32 ion-exchange chromatography after extracting it from soybean seeds with phosphate buffer (0.3 mol L−1, pH 7.0). The extract recovery rate of the purified enzyme was 8.18% and purification fold was 91.58. The soybean esterase appeared as two bands on the denaturing SDS-PAGE with molecular weights of 24 and 37.2 kDa, respectively, which proved that it is a dimer protein consisting of two subunits. The result of nondenaturing PAGE revealed that the soybean esterase is a single band with cholinesterase-like activity using α-naphthyl acetate as the substrate and fast blue B salt as coloring agent. The esterase showed very high sensitivity to 18 kinds of organophosphate pesticides and 6 kinds of carbamate pesticides with the lowest detective limits of 0.03125-0.0625 and 0.03125-0.25 mg kg−1, respectively, and can meet the demands of MRL specified by the most countries.