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Liquid scintillation counting at the limit of detection in biogeosciences
Liquid scintillation is widely used to quantify the activity of radioisotopes. We present an overview of the technique and its application to biogeosciences, particularly for turnover rate measurements. Microbial communities and their metabolism are notoriously difficult to analyze in low energy env...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2023
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10361571/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37485520 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2023.1194848 |
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author | Schubert, Florian Kallmeyer, Jens |
author_facet | Schubert, Florian Kallmeyer, Jens |
author_sort | Schubert, Florian |
collection | PubMed |
description | Liquid scintillation is widely used to quantify the activity of radioisotopes. We present an overview of the technique and its application to biogeosciences, particularly for turnover rate measurements. Microbial communities and their metabolism are notoriously difficult to analyze in low energy environments as biomass is exceedingly sparse and turnover rates low. Highly sensitive methods, such as liquid scintillation counting, are required to investigate low metabolic rates and conclusively differentiate them from the background noise of the respective analyzer. We conducted a series of experiments to explore the effects of luminescence, measurement time and temperature on scintillation measurements. Luminescence, the spontaneous emission of photons, disproportionally affects samples within the first few hours after sample preparation and can be minimized by following simple guidelines. Short measurement times will negatively affect liquid scintillation analysis or if background noise makes up a significant proportion of the detected events. Measurement temperature affected liquid scintillation analysis only when the temperature during the measurement reached approximately 30°C or higher, i.e. the liquid scintillation analyzer was placed in an environment without temperature control, but not in cases where chemicals were stored at elevated temperatures prior to measurement. Basic understanding on the functionality of a liquid scintillation analyzer and simple precautions prior to the measurement can significantly lower the minimum detection limit and therefore allow for determination of low turnover rates previously lost in the background noise. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10361571 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-103615712023-07-22 Liquid scintillation counting at the limit of detection in biogeosciences Schubert, Florian Kallmeyer, Jens Front Microbiol Microbiology Liquid scintillation is widely used to quantify the activity of radioisotopes. We present an overview of the technique and its application to biogeosciences, particularly for turnover rate measurements. Microbial communities and their metabolism are notoriously difficult to analyze in low energy environments as biomass is exceedingly sparse and turnover rates low. Highly sensitive methods, such as liquid scintillation counting, are required to investigate low metabolic rates and conclusively differentiate them from the background noise of the respective analyzer. We conducted a series of experiments to explore the effects of luminescence, measurement time and temperature on scintillation measurements. Luminescence, the spontaneous emission of photons, disproportionally affects samples within the first few hours after sample preparation and can be minimized by following simple guidelines. Short measurement times will negatively affect liquid scintillation analysis or if background noise makes up a significant proportion of the detected events. Measurement temperature affected liquid scintillation analysis only when the temperature during the measurement reached approximately 30°C or higher, i.e. the liquid scintillation analyzer was placed in an environment without temperature control, but not in cases where chemicals were stored at elevated temperatures prior to measurement. Basic understanding on the functionality of a liquid scintillation analyzer and simple precautions prior to the measurement can significantly lower the minimum detection limit and therefore allow for determination of low turnover rates previously lost in the background noise. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-07-07 /pmc/articles/PMC10361571/ /pubmed/37485520 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2023.1194848 Text en Copyright © 2023 Schubert and Kallmeyer. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Microbiology Schubert, Florian Kallmeyer, Jens Liquid scintillation counting at the limit of detection in biogeosciences |
title | Liquid scintillation counting at the limit of detection in biogeosciences |
title_full | Liquid scintillation counting at the limit of detection in biogeosciences |
title_fullStr | Liquid scintillation counting at the limit of detection in biogeosciences |
title_full_unstemmed | Liquid scintillation counting at the limit of detection in biogeosciences |
title_short | Liquid scintillation counting at the limit of detection in biogeosciences |
title_sort | liquid scintillation counting at the limit of detection in biogeosciences |
topic | Microbiology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10361571/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37485520 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2023.1194848 |
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