The Protein Man's Blog | A Discussion of Protein Research

To monitor a methylation reaction in real time, researchers either reached for a radioactive assay or an endpoint assay. A radioactive assay demanded special handling and waste disposal, and an endpoint assay was simpler but only showed the finish line, hiding everything that happened along the way. Neither approach revealed the reaction kinetics researchers needed. The gap between what researchers needed to see and what conventional methods showed drove the development of continuous, non-radioactive approaches to monitoring methyltransferase activity.