High resolution multichannel fluorescence detection for capillary electrophoresis. Application to multicomponent analysis

Microchip capillary electrophoresis for frontal analysis of free bilirubin and study of its interaction with human serum albumin

To meet the need for bedside monitoring of free bilirubin for neonates under critical conditions, a microfluidic chip was fabricated and tested for its coupling with CE/frontal analysis (FA) to determine free bilirubin and study of its binding interaction with HSA, which regulated its concentration in plasma. The poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) multichannel chip was fabricated by CO2 laser ablation and bonded with a fused-silica separation capillary for CE/FA separation with UV detection. The chip was designed to allow a complete assay of four electrophoretic runs using preconditioned channels to speed up the determination of free bilirubin and to deliver quick results for bedside monitoring. Under optimized conditions, the linear working range for free bilirubin was from 10 to 200 micromol with RSDs from 2.1 to 5.0% for n=3, and the LOD at 9 micromol for S/N=3. From a binding study between bilirubin and HSA under FA condition, the second binding constant for bilirubin-HSA was determined as 1.07x10(5) L/mol and the number of binding sites per HSA as 3.46. The results enabled the calculation of free bilirubin for jaundiced infants based on the clinically significant level of total bilirubin, producing a range of 118.3-119.4 micromol/L. The developed method is shown to meet the clinical requirement with additional margin of protection to detect the early rising level of free bilirubin prior to jaundice condition. The low-cost microchip CE/FA device is shown to produce quick results with high potential to deliver a suitable bed-side monitoring method for bilirubin management in neonates.

A multichannel native fluorescence detection system for capillary electrophoretic analysis of neurotransmitters in single neurons

A laser-induced native fluorescence detection system optimized for analysis of indolamines and catecholamines by capillary electrophoresis is described. A hollow-cathode metal vapor laser emitting at 224 nm is used for fluorescence excitation, and the emitted fluorescence is spectrally distributed by a series of dichroic beam-splitters into three wavelength channels: 250-310 nm, 310-400 nm, and >400 nm. A separate photomultiplier tube is used for detection of the fluorescence in each of the three wavelength ranges. The instrument provides more information than a single-channel system, without the complexity associated with a spectrograph/charge-coupled device-based detector. With this instrument, analytes can be separated and identified not only on the basis of their electrophoretic migration time but also on the basis of their multichannel signature, which consists of the ratios of relative fluorescence intensities detected in each wavelength channel. The 224-nm excitation channel resulted in a detection limit of 40 nmol L-1 for dopamine. The utility of this instrument for single-cell analysis was demonstrated by the detection and identification of the neurotransmitters in serotonergic LPeD1 and dopaminergic RPeD1 neurons, isolated from the central nervous system of the well-established neurobiological model Lymnaea stagnalis. Not only can this system detect neurotransmitters in these individual neurons with S/N>50, but analyte identity is confirmed on the basis of spectral characteristics.

Development of a two-color laser fluorescence detector. On-line detection of internal standards and unknowns by capillary electrophoresis within the same sample

A two-laser, two-color detector has been developed for the simultaneous detection of naturally occurring and recombinant (internal standards) cytokines within the same biological sample. The internal standards were labeled with Bimane and detected with a 408 nm laser while the natural cytokines were labeled with AlexaFluor633 and detected with a 633 nm laser. The two resulting electropherograms were plotted as overlaid traces and quantification of the natural materials determined by comparison with the standards. Using this system, recovery of all four cytokine standards was greater than 94% in both saline and cytokine-depleted plasma. These recoveries could be achieved with intra- and inter-assay coefficients of variance (c.v.) of less than 4.5 and 5.6, respectively. Application of this system to the examination of clinical samples demonstrated that measurement of the four pro-inflammatory cytokines could distinguish between normals, sub-clinical and clinical inflammation. An advantage of this approach is that direct calculation of unknowns by comparison to identical internal standards can shorten analytical time by eliminating the need for additional standard or calibration runs.

Two-dimensional fluorescence correlation in capillary electrophoresis for peak resolution and species identification

A new spectroscopic dimension-fluorescence intensity correlation--is introduced to enhance peak resolution and species identification in capillary electrophoresis. In two-dimensional correlation CE, a conventional electropherogram is spread into two dimensions through cross-correlation analysis of fluorescence time response. A laser that is sinusoidally modulated in intensity is used as the excitation source. Three channels of information are collected during a CE run: the steady-state intensity, the ac amplitude, and the phase-resolved fluorescence intensity. The correlation between two chosen channels is then evaluated. A two-dimensional correlation electropherogram consists of a plot of the correlation intensity versus two axes of migration time. Through correlation analysis, species discrimination and peak resolution are significantly enhanced without having to physically separate the solutes. Two-dimensional correlation CE showed complete resolution between two overlapping sample peaks with a resolution of 0.28 in the conventional one-dimensional electropherogram. In separations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons by micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC), two-dimensional correlation analysis resolved all overlapping elution peaks unseparable by one-dimensional MEKC, demonstrating the utility of 2D correlation in separation method development. The capability of 2D correlation CE in species identification is demonstrated with a sequence of 39 consecutively injected peaks containing four fluorescent dyes. Species identification in sequencing is achieved without complex data treatment in two-dimensional correlation CE.

Laser-induced fluorescence detection by liquid core waveguiding applied to DNA sequencing by capillary electrophoresis

A new laser-induced fluorescence detector for capillary electrophoresis (CE) is described. The detector is based on transverse illumination and collection of the emitted fluorescent light via total internal reflection along the separation capillary. The capillary is coated with a low refractive index fluoropolymer and serves as a liquid core waveguide (LCW). The emitted light is detected end-on with a CCD camera at the capillary exit. The observed detection limit for fluorescein is 2.7 pM (550 ymol) in the continuous-flow mode and 62 fM in the CE mode. The detector is applied to DNA sequencing. One-color G sequencing is performed with single-base resolution and signal-to-noise ratio approximately 250 for peaks around 500 bases. The signal-to-noise ratio is approximately 50 for peaks around 950 bases. Full four-color DNA sequencing is also demonstrated. The high sensitivity of the detector is suggested to partly be due to the efficient rejection of scattered laser light in the LCW. The concept should be highly suitable for capillary array detection.

A fully automated multicapillary electrophoresis device for DNA analysis

We describe the construction and performance of a fully automated multicapillary electrophoresis system for the analysis of fluorescently labeled biomolecules. A special detection system allows the simultaneous spectral analysis of all 96 capillaries. The main features are true parallel detection without any moving parts, high robustness, and full compatibility to existing protocols. The device can process up to 40 microtiter plates (96 and 384 well) without human interference, which means up to 15,000 samples before it has to be reloaded.

Analyte identification in capillary electrophoretic separation techniques

A review on applications of on-line hyphenation in capillary electrophoresis and capillary electrochromatography for the identification of migrating analytes is presented. There is an urgent need for unambiguous analyte identification by combining spectral information and observed migration times, because the parameters influencing the migration times and separation efficiencies in these separation techniques are not easily controlled, especially when real samples containing unknown interferences have to be analyzed. The spectrometric techniques covered here are ultraviolet and visible radiation (UV/Vis) absorption, fluorescence including fluorescence line-narrowing spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectrometry. Attention is essentially confined to literature reports in which the extra information provided by the detector is really used for identification purposes, especially in real-life samples, while the interfacing as such and analyte detectabilities in standard solutions are only briefly discussed. This article covers an extensive fraction of the literature published on this topic until the beginning of 1998.