Simple and Sensitive Assay for Nucleic Acids Using their Quenching Effect on the Chemiluminescence Reaction Between Luminol and Hydrogen Peroxide with Manganese-Tetrasulfonatophthalocyanine as a New Catalyst

The manganese-tetrasulfonatophthalo-cyanine (MnTSPc) catalyzed luminol-hydrogen peroxide chemiluminescence (CL) system can be quenched in the presence of nucleic acids. A new and highly sensitive CL quenching method for determining nucleic acids in aqueous solutions has been developed. Under optimum conditions, linear relationships were found between the quenched intensity of CL and the concentration of nucleic acids in the range 0.10–2.0µgmL^–1 for calf thymus DNA and 0–1.6µgmL^–1 for fish sperm DNA. The limits of detection were 14.8ngmL^–1 for calf thymus DNA and 21.7ngmL^–1 for fish sperm DNA. The relative standard deviation (RSD) of nine replicate measurements is 1.4% for 1.0µgmL^–1 calf thymus DNA. The method was applied to the analysis of nucleic acids in synthetic samples and the results are satisfactory.Received December 2, 2002; accepted June 2, 2003 published online September 1, 2003