Enzymatic assay of D-glucuronate using uronate dehydrogenase.

D-Glucuronate is a key metabolite in the process of detoxification of xenobiotics and in a recently constructed synthetic pathway to produce D-glucaric acid, a "top value-added chemical" from biomass. A simple and specific assay of D-glucuronate would be useful for studying these processes, but existing assays are either time-consuming or nonspecific. Using uronate dehydrogenase cloned from Agrobacterium tumefaciens, we developed an assay for D-glucuronate with a detection limit of 5 microM. This method was shown to be more suitable for a system with many interfering compounds than previous methods and was also applied to assays for myo-inositol oxygenase activity.