Nitrocefin is a chromogenic cephalosporin substrate routinely used to detect the presence of beta-lactamase enzymes produced by various microbes. Beta-lactamase mediated resistance to beta-lactam antibiotics such as penicillin is a widespread mechanism of resistance for a number of bacteria including members of the family Enterobacteriaceae, a major group of enteric Gram-negative bacteria. Other methods for beta-lactamase detection exist including PCR; however, nitrocefin allows for rapid beta-lactamase detection using few materials and inexpensive equipment.
Nitrocefin is a chromogenic cephalosporin substrate routinely used to detect the presence of beta-lactamase enzymes produced by various microbes. Beta-lactamase mediated resistance to beta-lactam antibiotics such as penicillin is a widespread mechanism of resistance for a number of bacteria including members of the family Enterobacteriaceae, a major group of enteric Gram-negative bacteria. Other methods for beta-lactamase detection exist including PCR; however, nitrocefin allows for rapid beta-lactamase detection using few materials and inexpensive equipment.
== Structure == As a cephalosporin, nitrocefin contains a beta-lactam ring which is susceptible to beta-lactamase mediated hydrolysis. Once hydrolyzed, the degraded nitrocefin compound rapidly changes color from yellow to red. Although nitrocefin is considered a cephalosporin, it does not appear to have antimicrobial properties.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).