Rapid mixing, chemical quench-flow devices can be used to determine fast reaction rates or single turnover rates of enzymatic reactions and to isolate reaction intermediates. In contrast to stopped-flow experiments employing fluorescence, for circular dichroism or absorption spectroscopy no optician output is necessary to monitor the reactions. Instead, reactions are started in a mixing chamber and quenched after a set amount of time by the addition of a chemical quenching reagent. The shorts time points accessible are governed by the dead time of mixing and are in the millisecond range. Substrates, products or intermediates present at the time of quench can be analyzed and quantified by different methods, for example by HPLC, gel electrophoresis, scintillation counting or mass spectrometry to name a few.

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Exciting Possibilities in Biology, Biochemistry and Biophysics


  • Measure fast enzyme kinetics without suitable optical output
  • Preform single-turnover experiments
  • Measure pre-steady state burst kinetics
  • Isolate transient reaction intermediates
  • Investigate transient reaction kinetics
  • And a lot more...