Question

Apart from Benedict's reagent, Sudan IV, Lugol's Iodine, and Biuret's soln, what other indicator tests are commonly used to test for biomolecules? Just looking for a few names/keywords to Google, or perhaps a source to read. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

As you are well aware biomolecules come in all shapes and flavours. Unsurprisingly, the specific tests for them depend on what biomolecules you are looking for - they range from sweet and simple to excruciatingly complex.

I have great personal preference for the former. My favourite of all is looking for presence/absence of proteins and checking for absorbance at 270 nm which is indicative of hydrophobic amino acids, hence proteins, in the solution.

For some reason, I am also particularly partial to HPLC for figuring out exactly what compounds I'm looking at...