Determination of nucleic acids is a common procedure in most molecular laboratories. Accurate and rapid method to quantify DNA is essential to obtain reliable outcomes. Fluorescence spectroscopy offers a simple yet highly sensitive technique to determine low amounts of DNA in solution (even in biological fluids such as blood, urine, or serum), overcoming the time-consumption and the primer/template dependency associated with PCR (polymerase chain reaction) analyses.
This application note details how to quantify low concentrations of DNA using the PerkinElmer FL 6500 spectrometer in combination with Quant-IT™ PicoGreen® kit. The fluorometric method reported is fast and highly sensitive while still granting a large linear dynamic range 0.05 – 1000 ng/mL.