Optical Design of a Quantitative Microvolume Nucleic Acid Spectrophotometer with Non-Optical Fiber and All Radiation-Hardened Lens Elements

Sheng-Feng Lin

doi:10.3390/photonics9010005

Sheng-Feng Lin

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics9010005

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Abstract

The purity of the nucleic acid samples obtained by extraction/precipitation or adsorption chromatography must be verified with microvolume spectrophotometry to ensure a high success rate of the subsequent nucleic acid sequencing while exploring the trace rare nucleic acids in space exploration with in-situ life detection. This paper reports an optical design for a radiation-hardened quantitative microvolume spectrophotometer with all radiation-hardened lens elements for space exploration instruments by using a non-optical fiber optical path with radiation-hardened optical glass elements. The results showed that the mean absolute error rate of the measured standard ribonucleic acid samples at concentrations between 50 ng/μL and 2300 ng/μL was within 2% when compared with a LINKO LKU–6000 ultraviolet–visible spectrophotometer.

Highlights

One of the main purposes of space exploration includes exploring the existence of ribonucleic acid (RNA), which is a valuable clue to the origin of life in the RNA world hypothesis [1] and using nucleic acid sequencing to prove its existence through various theories and feasible methods [2,3]
The results show that the relative intensity of the light source and the sensing area of each channel of the photodiode are more than 80%, which enables the quantitative microvolume nucleic acid spectrophotometer with all radiation-hardened lens elements to provide satisfactory repeatability and reproducibility; it makes the instrument easy to calibrate
This paper reports the optical system design of a quantitative microvolume nucleic acid spectrophotometer with all radiation-hardened lens elements for space exploration

Summary

Introduction

One of the main purposes of space exploration includes exploring the existence of ribonucleic acid (RNA), which is a valuable clue to the origin of life in the RNA world hypothesis [1] and using nucleic acid sequencing to prove its existence through various theories and feasible methods [2,3].when exploring trace rare nucleic acids in space with in-situ life detection, the purity of the nucleic acid samples obtained through extraction/precipitation or adsorption chromatography must be verified with microvolume spectrophotometry to ensure a high success rate of the subsequent nucleic acid sequencing.Sequencing of nucleic acids requires a series of complicated processes, includingDNA/RNA extraction, deletion of undesirable fragments with nucleases, and evaluation of the quality, yield, and purity of the samples. When exploring trace rare nucleic acids in space with in-situ life detection, the purity of the nucleic acid samples obtained through extraction/precipitation or adsorption chromatography must be verified with microvolume spectrophotometry to ensure a high success rate of the subsequent nucleic acid sequencing. Most of these spectrophotometers have built-in optical fiber optical paths [4,5]; aging and excessive fatigue/stress of optical fibers cause reliability problems in those light-weight instruments

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