The activity of research of biochemical laboratory of IMAA concerns the extraction, separation and characterization of organic molecules as proteins and phenolics, a class of secondary metabolite.
The techniques used to separate and identify phenolics and proteins are the High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) and electrophoresis on gel of polyacrilammide in SDS (SDS-PAGE) respectively.
In order to identify early Biomarkers of soil pollution, useful for environmental monitoring, it is studying heavy metals effect on plant metabolism investigating the possible variation of phenolic and proteic patterns by application and integration of biochemical techniques.
Moreover, Biological properties of proteins and phenolics (enzymatic and antioxidant) are analyzed because they more and more arouse great interest for their numerous possible applications in not only environmental field, but in other fields as the pharmacological and agricultural one. The activity of biochemical laboratory of IMAA, satisfying the demand for multidisciplinarity, is actually linked with that of other research teams. In particular, it is working with the Institute of Inorganic Methodologies and Plasmas-CNR, (Potenza branch) on biological activity of organic molecules ablated by laser on inorganic substrates and with Department of Biology DBAF of the University of Basilicata on antioxidant activity of phenolics, extracted by subcritical water, from plant by-products of the food and agricultural processing industry.

 

High performance Liquid chromatography(HPLC)
with diode-array detector.

Spectrophotometer with 6-position heated cell changer