Sensitive fluorescent polarization immunoassay by optimizing synchronization mismatch condition

Abstract

Fluorescence polarization (FP) is a one of the measurement techniques to study molecular interactions. We previously developed our own FP measurement system based on synchronization detection that uses a liquid crystal layer and an image sensor. The measurement cycle was fixed to 100 without any theoretical considerations, however, the influence of the synchrony and measurement cycles for FP values should be considered. In the present paper, we carried out an experimental and theoretical investigation into the influence of the synchrony between liquid crystal operation and image sampling for FP values of our system. When there was synchronization mismatch, the experimental FP values obtained using fluorescein ethylene glycol solution and the theoretical FP values changed according to the number of measurement cycles. Additionally, we measured the FP immunoassay for a physiologically active substance under synchronization mismatch. The synchronization mismatch influenced the measurement performance of the system, indicating that optimization of the number of image samplings was necessary to improve the measurement performance. For instance, the Mismatch 0.99 case, the measurement cycle should be 50 cycle judging from its dynamic range and R-square (R2). From the investigation, we obtained theoretical and experimental knowledge on FP response to facilitate further applications of our FP system.