Rapid and Sensitive Determination of Nucleic Acids by Enhanced Resonance Light Scattering Spectroscopy of Tetraphenyl Porphyrin Cobalt(II)Chloride

Abstract

A novel probe, tetraphenyl porphyrin Cobalt(II)chloride (CoTPPCl), was first developed for the determination of nucleic acids at a nanogram level by a resonance light scattering (RLS) technique. Under optimum conditions, the weak RLS signal of CoTPPCl was enhanced greatly by nucleic acids at 444.0 nm; the enhanced RLS intensity is proportional to the concentration of nucleic acids in the range of 0.05–3.5 mg L−1 for calf thymus DNA and 0.03–4.2 mg L−1 for fish sperm DNA. The detection limits (3δ) are 3.5 ng mL−1 for calf thymus DNA and 4.5 ng mL−1 for fish sperm DNA, respectively. The results show that determination of nucleic acids with CoTPPCl as a probe is much more sensitive than with α, β, γ, δ‐ tetrakis[4‐(trimethylammoniumyl)phenyl]porphine (TAPP). Synthetic samples and plasmid DNA extracted from K‐12‐HB101 colt were determined with satisfactory results.