I was running an experiment in biochem2 lab on trying to extract and purify lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) from bovine heart tissue. We have an old cow heart that was forgotten about in the fridge for about 2 years. The lab manager also bought us a new cow heart since the class is me and one other person.

Me and the other student decided it’d be cool to dissect both hearts to see if there’s any difference. The old heart was mine, and the new one was theirs. In a somewhat expected way, after ion-exchange chromatography, the absorbances of my fractions were nowhere near as high as they should be (on par with prof’s previous students and the other student in lab). This is telling us that there may have been little to no LDH in my cow heart.

Is there any literature or sources on how long LDH would remain in tissue after death? The old cow heart has been in the freezer all this time, but I still wanted to find it anything existed.

RE: flair - There’s no biochemistry flair, so I tagged this as analytical since that may be the next best fit.