Fluorescence inducing reagents

The development of antibody-based biosensors presents more difficulties than enzyme-based biosensors as the antigen-antibody interactions are not readily reversible because of the high values of the affinity constants. Another limitation is that the physicochemical changes resulting from the immunochemical reaction are often insufficient to provide detection limits comparable with those of conventional analysis. As a consequence, indirect systems have been developed that rely on the use of enzyme-or fluorescent-tagged reagents. Both competitive and sandwich formats are used. Evanescent wave-induced fluorescence is frequently chosen to avoid possible interferences from the bulk media. For... 

Although most steroids have their own U V-absorbance suitable for detection, localization of the spots can be based on the appearance of dark spots at 254 nm UV-light if a fluorescence layer is used most applications involve methods based on chemical reactions. Many spray reagents for the visualization of steroid spots have been described. However, special attention is needed to stabilize the color produced or the fluorescence induced on the plate. Sulfuric acid-methanol (or ethanol) is the most widely used reagent. In addition, phosphoric acid or antimony (III) chloride can be used to detect steroids on the plate or to detect steroids after spot elution. 

The non-radioactive labeling utilizes fluorescence, chemiluminescence, or biotin/avidin interactions. Capillary electrophoresis with laser-induced fluorescence was first employed in PAL by Miller et al. [51]. Gilbert and Rando recently reported several biotin-containing heterobifunctional reagents and used them successfully [18] (Fig. 5). 

It is now possible to design the experiments using molecular beams and laser techniques such that the initial vibrational, rotational, translational or electronic states of the reagent are selected or final states of products are specified. In contrast to the measurement of overall rate constants in a bulk kinetics experiment, state-to-state differential and integral cross sections can be measured for different initial states of reactants and final states of products in these sophisticated experiments. Molecular beam studies have become more common, lasers have been used to excite the reagent molecules and it has become possible to detect the product molecules by laser-induced fluorescence . These experimental studies have put forward a dramatic change in experimental study of chemical reactions at the molecular level and has culminated in what is now called state-to-state chemistry. 

Chemiluminescence of oxidized luminol has been the basis of several lumino-metric methods of estimation of TAC (Table 1). The mostcommon is to measure the induction time of the reaction. Often the chemiluminescence is first induced by an oxidant and then attenuated by addition of a sample, and the time to recover the initial fluorescence is measured. The enhanced chemiluminescent assay introduced a decade ago is based on the oxidation of luminol by perborate or by hydrogen peroxide in a reaction catalyzed by horseradish peroxidase. Enhancement (and stabilization) of luminescence is achieved by addition of p-iodophenol. The original procedure used a commercial reagent kit (ECL Anti-oxidant Detection Pack... 

The first two points represent a general motivation for miniaturization in separation science independent of the actual fabrication technology. The benefit of a reduction of the consumption of sample, reagents, and mobile phase in chemical and biochemical analysis is self-evident and does not need to be discussed further (reduced consumption of precious samples and reagents, reduced amounts of waste, environmental aspects). This advantage is, however, sharply contrasted by its severe implications on the detection side, as discussed elsewhere in this volume in detail. The detection of the separated zones of very small sample volumes critically depends on the availability of highly sensitive detection methods. It is not surprising that extremely sensitive laser-induced-fluorescence (LIF) has been the mostly used detection principle for chip-based separation systems so far. 

The 3-(2-furoyl)quinoline-2-carbaldehyde has been used as a fluorogenic reagent for the analysis of primary amines by liquid chromatography with laser-induced fluorescence detection [10,11]. 

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