Potential use of quantum dots in flow cytometry

Raquel Ibáñez-Peral; Peter L Bergquist; Malcolm R Walter; Moreland Gibbs; Ewa M Goldys; Belinda Ferrari

doi:10.3390/ijms9122622

Potential use of quantum dots in flow cytometry

Int J Mol Sci. 2008 Dec;9(12):2622-2638. doi: 10.3390/ijms9122622. Epub 2008 Dec 17.

Authors

Raquel Ibáñez-Peral¹, Peter L Bergquist^{1

2}, Malcolm R Walter³, Moreland Gibbs¹, Ewa M Goldys⁴, Belinda Ferrari^{1

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
² Department of Molecular Medicine & Pathology, University of Auckland Medical School, Auckland, New Zealand.
³ Department of Earth Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
⁴ Department of Physics, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
⁵ School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

Abstract

QDs may offer significant advantages in environmental and bead-based applications where the target cells need to be discriminated above background fluorescence. We have examined the possible applications of QDs for flow cytometric measurements (FCM) by studying their excitation - emission spectra and their binding to paramagnetic beads. We labelled beads with either QDs or a commonly-used fluorochrome (FITC) and studied their fluorescence intensity by FCM. Flow cytometric comparisons indicated that the minimum fluorophore concentration required for detection of QDs above autofluorescent background was 100-fold less than for FITC.

Keywords: Quantum dots; autofluorescence; detection limit; flow cytometry; fluorescent detection.