A liquid core waveguide fluorescence detector for multicapillary electrophoresis applied to DNA sequencing in a 91-capillary array

The investigation in this report aimed at providing photophysical evidence that the long-lived triplet excited state plays an important role in the non-single-exponential photobleaching kinetics of fluorescein in microscopy. Experiments demonstrated that a thiol-containing reducing agent, mercaptoethylamine (MEA or cysteamine), was the most effective, among other commonly known radical quenchers or singlet oxygen scavengers, in suppressing photobleaching of fluorescein while not reducing the fluorescence quantum yield. The protective effect against photobleaching of fluorescein in the bound state was also found in microscopy. The antibleaching effect of MEA let to a series of experiments using time-delayed fluorescence spectroscopy and nanosecond laser flash photolysis. The combined results showed that MEA directly quenched the triplet excited state and the semioxidized radical form of fluorescein without affecting the singlet excited state. The triplet lifetime of fluorescein was reduced upon adding MEA. It demonstrated that photobleaching of fluorescein in microscopy is related to the accumulation of the long-lived triplet excited state of fluorescein and that by quenching the triplet excited state and the semioxidized form of fluorescein to restore the dye molecules to the singlet ground state, photobleaching can be reduced.

Fluorescent dye-labeled DNA primers have been developed that exploit fluorescence energy transfer (ET) to optimize the absorption and emission properties of the label. These primers carry a fluorescein derivative at the 5' end as a common donor and other fluorescein and rhodamine derivatives attached to a modified thymidine residue within the primer sequence as acceptors. Adjustment of the donor-acceptor spacing through the placement of the modified thymidine in the primer sequence allowed generation of four primers, all having strong absorption at a common excitation wavelength (488 nm) and fluorescence emission maxima of 525, 555, 580, and 605 nm. The ET efficiency of these primers ranges from 65% to 97%, and they exhibit similar electrophoretic mobilities by gel electrophoresis. With argon-ion laser excitation, the fluorescence of the ET primers and of the DNA sequencing fragments generated with ET primers is 2- to 6-fold greater than that of the corresponding primers or fragments labeled with single dyes. The higher fluorescence intensity of the ET primers allows DNA sequencing with one-fourth of the DNA template typically required when using T7 DNA polymerase. With single-stranded M13mp18 DNA as the template, a typical sequencing reaction with ET primers on a commercial sequencer provided DNA sequences with 99.8% accuracy in the first 500 bases. ET primers should be generally useful in the development of other multiplex DNA sequencing and analysis methods.

DNA sequencing separations have been performed in microfabricated electrophoresis channels with the goal of determining whether high-quality sequencing is feasible with these microdevices. The separation matrix, separation temperature, channel length and depth, injector size, and injection parameters were optimized. DNA fragment sizing separations demonstrated that 50-micron-deep channels provide the best sensitivity for our detection configuration. One-color sequencing separations of single-stranded M13mp18 DNA on 3% linear polyacrylamide (LPA) were used to optimize the twin-T injector size, injection conditions, and temperature. The best one-color separations were observed with a 250-micron twin-T injector, an injection time of 60 s, and a temperature of 35 degrees C. The first 500 bases appeared in 9.2 min with a resolution of > 0.5, and the separation extended to 700 bases. The best four-color sequencing separations were performed using 4% LPA, a temperature of 40 degrees C, and a 100-micron twin-T injector. These four-color runs were complete in only 20 min, could be automatically base-called using BaseFinder to over 600 bp after the primer, and were 99.4% accurate to 500 bp. These results significantly advance the quality of microchip-based electrophoretic sequencing and indicate the feasibility of performing high-speed genomic sequencing with microfabricated electrophoretic devices.