Onno Bakker Lumi-lmagerfM.... "TI Fl - Lab Protocols Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg GmbH 0 O::l n::l n0 a Cd Ba~ k~k(t) e"'"'I r L~u m.i-lm a g e r'M~~ I Fl~ C 3--I 3CIQD T \t ' r-LQ ac:r b P~rot8' oc8 oli;\ s ::E W"0 _. pit~:;. ah rt=t.~ 1ly'<~ 4 iS' ::!1 nF i"tO gCu!;; o or-elo~ osr,~ SCI:) p~.....""'l ri:::I nC1Q g(t) e""'l r ONNO BAKKER, Ph.D. Academic Medical Centre Endocrinology, FS-l71 Meibergdreef 9 110S AZ Amsterdam Netherlands ISBN 978-3-540-64794-2 ISBN 978-3-662-08431-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-08431-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for. Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Bakker, Onno: Lumi-imager F1 - lab protocols/Onno Bakker (author). - Berlin; Hei delberg, New York; Barcelona; Budapest; Hong Kong; London; Mailand; Paris; Singa pore; Tokyo: Springer, 1998 This work is subject to copyright. 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Product liability: The publishers cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information about the application of operative techniques and medications contained in this book. In every individual case the user must check such information by consulting the rele vant literature. Data conversion: K+ V Fotosatz, Beerfelden Cover Design: Mitterweger Medien GmbH, Plankstadt SPIN 10687024. 18/3137-5 4 3 2 1 0 - Printed on acid-free paper Trademarks • Lumi-Imager™, LumiAnalyst™, TriPure™ are trademarks of Boehringer Mannheim GmbH • Windows ™ and Microsoft® Excel are a trademark and regis tered trademark of Microsoft Corp. • CSPD®, CDP-Star™, Western-Light™ and Nitro-Block™ are a registered trademark and trademarks of Tropix Inc. • Stratalinker® and PosiBlot® are registered trademarks of Stratagene Inc. • Saran Wrap® is a registered trademark of Dow Chemicals • ECL™ is a trademark of Amersham International PIe • SYBR® green and SYPRO® red are registered trademarks of Molecular Probes • Protran® BA8S is a registered trademark of Schleicher and Schuell • PolyATract® is a registered trademark of Promega Corp. I Trademarks v Digital imaging and quantification of chemiluminescence and fluorescence: Lumi-Imager and its applications * Onno Bakker 1, Marti Aldea 2, Jörg Bergemann 3, Albert Geiger4, Michael Kirchgesser5, Achim Kramer6, • Stephan Schröder-Köhne 7, Hans-Joachim Höltke 8 ABSTRAa The instrument, Lumi-Imager was developed for the detec tion and accurate quantification of chemiluminescent signals on blots and in microtiter plates. It contains a cooled CCD camera, a specially developed lens system and software. In addition to luminescence, Lumi-Imager can also detect and quantify UV-excited fluorescent signals in gels. Here we de scribe the components and features of this instrument, as weil as so me of its applications. * Parts of this article have been published in Onno Bakker et al., "Digital imaging and quantification of chemiluminescence and fluorescence: detec tion of mutation with protein truncation test". In: Practical use of non radioisotopic systems. Part 11 - commercially available kits, ed. S. Nomura and T. Watanabe (Tokyo: Shujunsha, 1998), 140-154 I Laboratory of Experimental Endocrinology, F5-171, Academic Medical Centre, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands 2 Dept. CiEmcies Mediques Basiques, Universitat de Lleida, Rovira Roure, 44, 25198 Lleida, Catalunya, Spain 3 Paul Gerson Unna Skin Research Center, Beiersdorf AG, Unnastraße 48, 20245 Hamburg, Germany 4 PNA Diagnostics AIS, R0nnegade 2, DK-2100 Copenhagen 0, Denmark 5 Boehringer Mannheim GmbH, Nonnenwald 2, 82372 Penzberg, Germany 6 Institut für Medizinische Immunologie, Universitätsklinikum Charite, Schumannstraße 20-21, 10098 Berlin, Germany 7 Max-Planck Institut für biophysikalische Chemie, 37070 Göttingen, Germany 8 Boehringer Mannheim GmbH, Nonnenwald 2, 82372 Penzberg, Germany I Digital imaging and quantification AlM The aim of the authors is to present the reader with their experience in using Lumi-Imager, an apparatus recently developed by Boehringer Mannheim to accurately quantify "glow-type" non-radioactive lumi nescent signals. INTRODUCTION Non-radioactive methods are increasingly used in many laboratories and are starting to replace traditional methods which involve radioac tive isotopes for the labeling and detedion of nucleic acids and pro teins. Non-radioadive methods not only avoid the hazards, cost, and inconvenience associated with radioadive methods, but are also of ten faster and more sensitive. Enzyme-catalyzed chemiluminescence has established itself as the most sensitive non-radioactive detedion method. Initially, chemiluminescence was widely used in Western blotting applications. Non-radioactive haptens, such as digoxigenin (DIG) or vitamin H (biotin), were later established for nucleic acid la beling, whereby chemiluminescence proved to be highly sensitive in applications such as Southern, Northern, dot blotting and gel-shift assays. A disadvantage of these non-radioadive chemiluminescent methods was that the signals had to be deteded with X-ray films. Due to their very low dynamic ranges (approximately 1:100), these films cannot simultaneously image very strong and very weak signals without overexposure of the strong signal. Additionally, detecting sig nals with X-ray films requires the use of a dark room, exposure to be set up in a light-tight cassette, and films to be later developed. This procedure entails extra work and inconvenience, and also in volves the handling of hazardous chemicals. Furthermore, it is not possible to directly quantitate signals on X-ray film. Indired quantita tion is achieved by scanning the films, after wh ich absorbance values can only then be taken as an indirect estimation of the intensity of luminescence. As X-ray films exhibit a non-linear response to lumi nescence (as weil as to radioactivity), data acquired in this mann er can only provide a rough approximation of the true light emission from the object. Nowadays, (CD cameras offer the possibility of sen sitive detection and direct quantitation of light. In fact, deeply cooled (CD cameras are used in astronomy to observe faint, distant objeds. 2 Digital imaging and quantification Based on this technology, Boehringer Mannheim has developed Lumi-Imager, a cooled CCD camera and special lens system for the highly sensitive detection and accurate quantitation of chemilumines cence on blots and in microtiter plates. 1.1 Technical description of the instrument The system consists of a Peltier-cooled CCD camera (cooled to about -40°C) and a specially developed lens system that allows image acquisition of "glow-type" chemiluminescent signals, e.g., catalyzed by alkaline phosphatase or horseradish peroxi dase on sampies of up to 24x30 cm2 or four microtiter plates (Fig. 1). The drawer can accommodates an UV-transillumina tor, in which case a filter wheel with four different bandpass fil ters is mounted in front of the lens system. The high resolution detector (1280xl024 pixels) and specially designed optics achieve aresolution of two lines per millimeter over the whole Air Forced --=::::,: ::"""' __: --1 Cooling ii' i': '.,!,J", GGO Chip with Special . Tripie Stage Peltier Lens ------1~~~~~ Cooling System Filters: I .. 520 nm Mini Oarkroom 600 nm fI Enclosure 650 nm Stabilized .. UV trans lIluminator -------1 Probe Size 20 cm x 20 cm Fig. 1. Photograph and schematic drawing of the Lumi-Imager instrument I Digital imaging and quantification 3 sampIe area (24x30 cm2) and permit a fixed optical alignment. This fixed optical alignment, together with a specially designed focus stabilization which compensates for temperature varia tions and long-term exposure effects, avoids tedious and re peated focusing. These special optics and the built-in Win dows-based camera driver software, which automatically per forms flatfield- and detector-specific corrections, enable accu rate quantitation of chemiluminescent signals across the entire sampIe area. For microtiter plate measurements, Lumi-Imager demonstrates excellent linearity over the whole dynamic range and compares very favorably to dedicated luminescence microti ter plate readers. With regards to contrast and resolution, sensi tivity and image quality are wholly comparable to X-ray film. In addition, Lumi-Imager provides the option to use a more sensitive "binning" mode which reduces exposure time bya factor of up to four compared to X-ray film; and although resolution is reduced two-fold in the process, it is still compar able to that of most phosphoimagers. The instrument has a dy namic range of 1:10000 which allows for imaging and quantita tive analysis of weak and strong signals in a single exposure. To this end, LumiAnalyst software has been developed which enables fast and accurate molecular weight determination and quantification of bands and dots derived from all blotting ap plications (Southern, Northern, dot and Western blots), as weIl as microtiter plates, including calibration. Typical examples of the LumiAnalyst screen are shown in Figs. 7 and 8. Experimen tal data can be stored together with the images in an integrated database. In addition, data can be transferred direct1y to Microsoft® Excel for further analysis and generation of gra phics. Furthermore, images are stored as TIFF files which can be readily imported into other programs for documentation or publication purposes, which, incidentaIly, was done with the figures presented in this book. I 1.2 Applications Here we discuss some important cl,assic and widely used mo lecular biology techniques in relatioit to non-radioactive label ing and signal detection/quantification using Lumi-Imager. In addition, more recent and exciting methods, such as the pro- 4 Digital imaging and quantifjcation