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Quenching the firefly bioluminescence by various ions

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Abstract

The luciferase reporter gene assay system is broadly applied in various biomedical aspects, including signaling pathway dissection, transcriptional activity analysis, and genetic toxicity testing. It significantly improves the experimental accuracy and reduces the experimental error by the addition of an internal control. In the current research, we discovered some specific ions that could selectively inhibit firefly luciferase while having a negligible effect on renilla luciferase in vitro in the dual-reporter gene assay. We showed that these ionic compounds had a high potential of being utilized as quench-and-activate reagents in the dual-reporter assay. Furthermore, results from kinetic studies on ion-mediated quenching effects indicated that different ions have distinct inhibition modes. Our study is anticipated to guide a more affordable design of quench-and-activate reagents in biomedicine and pharmaceutical analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Chemical Biology (MOE), School of Pharmacy, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, 250012, China

    Huateng Zhang, Haixiu Bai, Tianyu Jiang, Zhao Ma, Lupei Du & Minyong Li

  2. Department of Pharmacology, School of Pharmacy, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, 250012, China

    Yanna Cheng & Yubin Zhou

  3. Institute of Biosciences & Technology, Texas A&M University Health Science Center, Houston, TX, 77030, USA

    Minyong Li

  4. Shandong Medicine Technician College, Taian, Shandong, 271016, China

    Haixiu Bai

Authors
  1. Huateng Zhang
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  2. Haixiu Bai
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  3. Tianyu Jiang
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  4. Zhao Ma
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  5. Yanna Cheng
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  6. Yubin Zhou
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  7. Lupei Du
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  8. Minyong Li
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Minyong Li.

Additional information

Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available: The results of dual luciferase reporter gene simulated assay using other ionic compounds in vitro. See DOI: 10.1039/c5pp00432b

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Zhang, H., Bai, H., Jiang, T. et al. Quenching the firefly bioluminescence by various ions. Photochem Photobiol Sci 15, 244–249 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1039/c5pp00432b

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/c5pp00432b

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