Re: Europium Chelates

From: Howard Shapiro (hms@shapirolab.com)
Date: Tue Jun 27 2000 - 20:27:59 EST


Alan Saluk writes-

>I had a researcher come into the lab with a Eu-chelate as the
>fluorochrome.  He came without literature and said it had an excitation
>peak around 345nm (I used the relatively weak 351nm line from an
>Enterprise) and a very narrow emission at 615nm (I used a 610/20 to
>collect).  I was unable to see any kind of signal although his controls
>using a FITC-conjugate worked fine.  I was a little suspicious when he
>said it was "quantumly inefficient" and he had never seen it tried on a
>flow cytometer (I'm betting it might need a little more time in the
>beam).  Do any of the gurus out there have any wisdom to share.

Eu-chelates have fluorescence lifetimes of about 1 millisecond.  They have
been measured by flow cytometry using relatively slow flow and a
measurement station well downstream from the excitation beam.  The
references are:

Condrau MA, Schwendener RA, Niederer P, Anliker M: Time-resolved flow
cytometry for the measurement of lanthanide chelate fluorescence: I.
Concept and theoretical evaluation.  Cytometry 16:187-94, 1994
Condrau MA, Schwendener RA, Zimmermann M, Muser MH, Graf U, Niederer P,
Anliker M: Time-resolved flow cytometry for the measurement of lanthanide
chelate fluorescence:  II. Instrument design and experimental
results.  Cytometry 16:195-205, 1994

A commercial instrument would have to be modified substantially to do this
trick...

-Howard



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