Bovine serum albumin and Triton X-100 greatly increase phosphomonoesterases and arylsulphatase extraction yield from soil

Extraction of arylsulphatase (aryS), acid (acP) and alkaline phosphomonoesterase (alkP) from six different soils using sodium pyrophosphate (0.14 M, pH 7.1) yielded brown extracts displaying enzymatic activity mostly below detection limit. Tris–HCl (50 mM, pH 7.5) gave an extraction yield, on average, lower than 0.5%, but addition of Triton X-100 or bovine serum albumine (BSA) to Tris buffer increased the extraction yield 2–8 times. When both Triton X-100 and BSA were added to the buffer, the extraction yield was more than additive and reached 2–13% for acP, 2–5% for alkP and 3–6% for aryS, depending on the soil. In addition, these extracts were colourless or at most light yellow, showing that besides the high yield enzymes were extracted along with negligible amounts of humic substances.