We know. It’s NOT everyone that has a love affair with organic chemistry. Yes, there’s no shame in NOT being a nerdy chemist. But then when you encounter a term like TMB Peroxidase Substrate, you’d like to know if it affects your wellbeing in any way.
Thankfully, you are here, and we’d do our best to give you the bits of information you need about the subject while keeping everything so simple a kid would understand it. In order to get you up to speed on TMB Peroxidase Substrate, you need to understand what it is and how it affects you.
So what is TMB Peroxidase Substrate?
To answer this easily, let’s break everything down. First, let’s find out what TMB means…
TMB is an abbreviation of one of those long compounds. It stands for Tetramethylbenzidine. Tetramethylbenzidine is chromogenic. That is, it is a colorless compound that can change to a colored substance when subjected to certain chemical reactions. This change in color helps lab technicians determine the kind of substance it has come in contact with.
For example, let’s assume that it is known that substance X turns bluish green when it comes into contact with a particular compound Z that is produced by a certain virus. If a lab technician runs a test with a sample and sees the chromogenic substance turn bluish green, he/she can deduce that there is the likelihood of the presence of that virus.
Now while this may NOT be conclusive, it helps determine whether further investigations are necessary.
Now that we’ve got the TMB out of the way, let’s see what Peroxidase means…
Peroxidases (also known as peroxide reductases) refer to a certain group of enzymes (quite a large group, we must point out) that are generally known to break up peroxides. More importantly, they play critical parts in a number of important biological processes. Please, feel free to visit this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peroxidase if you want to learn more about these class of enzymes.
We hope things are getting a lot clearer to you now, aren’t they?
Now for the last piece of the name puzzle, let’s see what Substrate means…
In basic biochemistry, we’d define a substrate as any molecule on which an enzyme acts. Let’s say an Enzyme X works on Molecule J, Molecule J would be considered a substrate.
So now that we’ve defined the component parts of TMB Peroxidase Substrate, what would the definition of the entire phrase be? Let’s try something like this…
It is a colorless compound that can change to a colored substance when subjected to a chemical reaction by enzymes from the peroxide reductases group. Basically, it allows chemists to deduce the presence of Peroxidases.
So of what Use is it?
TMB Peroxidase Substrate is used in (wait for it, another big phrase) enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. Now because we don’t have enough time to dig into another long definition, let’s just go with the abbreviation: ELISA (And if you see reference to EIA test, it’s the same procedure).
An ELISA test is a procedure that makes it possible for a type of first-stage diagnosis to be done when there is a suspicion of certain diseases. This test checks for the presence of certain antibodies which are usually released by your body as it tries to fight antigens in your body.
For those who might NOT understand what antibodies are, they are proteins that your body makes as its response or way of fighting these harmful substances that are known as antigens (Visit this link to learn a lot more about antibodies).
For example, if someone is suspected to have HIV, an ELISA test would likely be the first type of test that would be conducted to ascertain the presence of antibodies that are known to be released by the human body in response to the HIV virus. This test is more like a screening to determine if more in-depth tests should be conducted.
If you show symptoms for certain health conditions, a doctor would order an ELISA test. These health conditions include the following: Zika virus, chickenpox, shingles, syphilis, Lyme disease and HIV.
Note: This isn’t an extensive list.
Conclusion
It’s NOT always we have to deal with medical terms that require several paragraphs for us to get a simple overview of. Hopefully, you’ll no longer be completely confused when next you see a reference to TMB Peroxidase Substrate.
