Rainbow bead

Rainbow Beads. Recently, color tagging of resin beads has also been developed. Polymer beads displaying chemical compounds or families of compounds were stained with oil-based organic dyes (red, blue, green, black, yellow) that were used as coding tags. The... 

Figure 3.4. Confocal photomicrograph of bi layer beads (the outer layerwas labeled with FITC) and photomicrograph of rainbow beads. Left Adopted with permission from Ref. [96], Copyright Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH Co. KGaA. Right Adopted with permission from Ref. [97], Copyright 2010 American Chemical Society.

A novel approach using the sorbent phase directly (with no extraction) in contact with cell lines from rainbow trout liver was developed by Schirmer et al.114 and Bopp et al.115 The cell lines were used to detect EROD activity from specific PAHs. A modified ceramic dosimeter (Toximeter sampler containing Biosilon 160-300 pm diameter polystyrene beads as the sorbent phase) was deployed for extended periods in groundwater known to be contaminated by PAHs. The response obtained using the cell lines incubated with Biosilon beads correlated with the concentrations of PAHs known to have EROD-inducing activity. The system is versatile as other cell lines can be used depending on the toxicological response of interest. 

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