Reverse zymography: Overview and pitfalls

Abstract

Reverse zymography is a technique by which protease inhibitor(s) in a sample could be electrophoretically separated in a substrate-impregnated acrylamide gel and their relative abundance could be semi-quantified. The gel after electrophoresis is incubated with a protease when the impregnated substrate and all other proteins of the sample are degraded into small peptides except the inhibitor(s) that show clear bands against a white background. Since reverse zymography cannot distinguish between a protease inhibitor and a protein that is resistant against proteolysis, the results should be confirmed from inhibition of protease activity by solution state assay.