Chemiluminescence determination of ultramicro DNA with a flow-injection method Original Research Article

A high sensitive flow-injection chemiluminescence method for determination of calf thymus DNA and herring sperm DNA has been developed. The method is based on the chemiluminescence reaction of Rhodamine B–cerium(IV)-thermally denatured DNAs in sulfuric acid media. The proposed procedure allows quantitation of DNAs in the range 2.6×10−5 to 0.26 μg ml−1 for calf thymus DNA and 5.0×10−8 to 5.0×10−5 μg ml−1 for herring sperm DNA with correlation coefficients 0.9998 and 0.9996 (both n=11), respectively. The detection limits (3σ) are 6.5×10−6 μg ml−1 for calf thymus DNA and 4.3×10−8 μg ml−1 for herring sperm DNA. The possible mechanism of chemiluminescence in the system is discussed.