Enzyme unit SI unit, the enzyme unit is discouraged in favour of the katal, the unit recommended by the General Conference on Weights and Measures in 1978 and officially adopted in 1999. One katal is the amount of enzyme that converts 1 mole of substrate per second, so The enzyme unit should not be confused with the international unit (IU); although it is true that both measure chemical activity and that for many enzymes 1 U = 1 IU (because for many enzymes the existing U was adopted as the newer IU), international units can be defined for the biologic activity of
Arbitrary unit (such as "p.d.u./L"). Arbitrary unit In science and technology, an arbitrary unit (abbreviated arb. unit, "see below") or procedure defined unit (p.d.u.) is a relative unit of measurement to show the ratio of amount of substance, intensity, or other quantities, to a predetermined reference measurement. The reference measurement is typically defined by the local laboratories or dependent on individual measurement apparatus. It is therefore impossible to compare "1 arb. unit" by one measurer and "1000 arb. unit" by another measurer without detailed prior knowledge on how the respective "arbitrary units" were defined; thus, the unit is sometimes called an unknown