Biochemical reagent refers to the biological material or organic compounds related to life science research, clinical diagnostics and medical research reagents.
The basic components of organisms extracted from the organism or chemically synthesized, are used for biological component identification and biological products manufacturing. With the development of life sciences, biochemical reagents has developed into a large class of chemical reagents, that there are more than 10,000 kinds of commodities. 2500 kinds of biochemical reagent are sold in China. Biochemical reagents easily lost vitality and get short shelf life when they contact heat, moisture and light, so that the storage conditions are harsh. For example, the vast majority of the enzyme cannot stand high temperature, so that they should be stored at 0 ~ 5 ℃, while some enzyme reagents used as genetic engineering need to be stored at -20 ℃. According to whether contained in living tissue or produced during the metabolism, biochemical reagents can be divided into amino acids, peptides, proteins, nucleotides, nucleic acids, enzymes, coenzymes, carbohydrates, esters, and hormones and so on; and according to the need of biological studies, biochemical reagents can be divided into electrophoresis reagents, chromatography reagents, immunological reagents, labeling reagents, and organization chemical reagents and so on.
Depending on the application of biochemical reagents there are certain requirements for its purity and technology. E.g., enzyme reagent, there are crude enzyme, enzyme crystal; crystallized repeatedly enzyme and enzyme preparations that do not contain mixed enzymes.
There are three methods to produce biochemical reagent:
① isolated and purified from organisms;
② chemical synthesis;
③ fermentation.
The technical requirements for biochemical reagent products includes: content, melting point, freezing point, optical rotation, moisture, spectral characteristics, refractive index, density and bioactivity.