Determination of glycogen by Rayleigh light scattering Original Research Article

Glycogen in aqueous solution displays intense light scattering. Study by dynamic laser light scattering showed that glycogen in aqueous solution exists as particles, with average hydrodynamics radii (Rh) ca. 22 nm for rabbit liver glycogen (RL gly) and 18 nm for oyster glycogen (O gly) and the particle size distribution width is narrow. Based on this, a method for glycogen determination based on Rayleigh light scattering using a conventional spectrofluorometer is developed. The light scattering intensity (LSI) is well proportional to the concentration of RL gly over the wide range of 0.8–4000 μg ml−1 and other two kinds of glycogen were also studied. The effect of factors such as temperature, ionic strength, pH, holding time and solvent were studied in detail and only organic solvents affect the LSI. There was little or no interference from monosaccharides or disaccharides, β-cyclodextrin, some proteins and metal ions. This method has many advantages such as extremely simplicity, stability, accuracy, reproducibility and wide linear range. Six synthetic samples were analyzed with satisfactory results.