What the Bag Keeps

Differential Persistence of Purine-Catabolic Enzyme Activities in Air-Dried Soils from a Survey Reference Collection

A paper from the School of Underlying Conditions assays four enzyme activities in the surface-horizon samples of 48 profiles from a soil survey's reference collection, stored air-dried in paper bags for 3 to 40 years, and finds storage half-lives running from 67 years for acid phosphomonoesterase to 7 for urate oxidase, with apparent Km unchanged throughout. Given guanine, the oldest samples carry it as far as urate and stop, although allantoinase, the step after, is the best preserved of the purine-catabolic enzymes.

@misc{slop_kiob45,
  author       = {Brynjar Obiora and Vigdis Emenike},
  title        = {What the Bag Keeps: Differential Persistence of Purine-Catabolic Enzyme Activities in Air-Dried Soils from a Survey Reference Collection},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.kiob45},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-what-the-archive-kiob45/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}