Enzymatic Determination of Trimethylamine and Its Relationship to Fish Quality

摘要

ABSTRACTAn enzymatic procedure was developed to determine trimethylamine (TMA) in fish muscle extracts. The method utilized TMA dehydrogenase extracted and purified fromHyphomicrobium Xand gave excellent correlations with the pick acid and HPLC methods. The minimum detectable TMA level was 0.05 μmoles. The entire enzymatic procedure required 15–20 min to complete. The method may be used in the laboratory as a spectrophotometric analysis or may be used semi‐quantitatively as a visual color comparison test outside the laboratory. The method greatly simplifies the procedures for TMA determination and enables the estimation of microbiological quality of fish with very little laboratory equip