Quantitative Determination of Uric Acid in Insect Feces by Lithium Carbonate Extraction and the Enzymatic-Spectrophotometric1 Method

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Abstract
Most analyses for insect uric acid were done by the colorimetric methods described by Folin and Denis (1912), Benedict and Franke (1922), Folin (1933), Brown (1945), and Caraway (1955). These methods are neither specific nor quantitatively accurate (Buchanan et al. 1945, Liddle et al. 1959). However, Sen (1968) used enzymatic spectrophotometry to analyze uric acid in flour as an index of insect infestation. Kalckar (1947) devised the highly specific and sensitive enzymatic-spectrophotometric method for determining uric acid which, as modified by Praetorius and Poulsen (1953) and Feichtmeir and Wrenn (1955), was described in detail by Liddle et al. (1959) for use with human serum and urine. The method is based on the fact that uric acid, which has an absorption peak at 292 mμ, is, in the presence of uricase, oxidized to allantoin which absorbs far less light of the same wavelength. Thus the concentration of uric acid can be calculated from the decrease in absorbance after treatment with uricase.

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