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On-the-fly decoding luminescence lifetimes in the microsecond region for lanthanide-encoded suspension arrays

2014; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 5; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/ncomms4741

2041-1723

Yiqing Lu, Jie Lu, Jiangbo Zhao, Janet Cusido, Françisco M. Raymo, Jingli Yuan, Sean Yang, Robert C. Leif, Yujing Huo, James A. Piper, J. Paul Robinson, Ewa M. Goldys, Dayong Jin,

Advanced biosensing and bioanalysis techniques

Significant multiplexing capacity of optical time-domain coding has been recently demonstrated by tuning luminescence lifetimes of the upconversion nanoparticles called 'τ-Dots'. It provides a large dynamic range of lifetimes from microseconds to milliseconds, which allows creating large libraries of nanotags/microcarriers. However, a robust approach is required to rapidly and accurately measure the luminescence lifetimes from the relatively slow-decaying signals. Here we show a fast algorithm suitable for the microsecond region with precision closely approaching the theoretical limit and compatible with the rapid scanning cytometry technique. We exploit this approach to further extend optical time-domain multiplexing to the downconversion luminescence, using luminescence microspheres wherein lifetimes are tuned through luminescence resonance energy transfer. We demonstrate real-time discrimination of these microspheres in the rapid scanning cytometry, and apply them to the multiplexed probing of pathogen DNA strands. Our results indicate that tunable luminescence lifetimes have considerable potential in high-throughput analytical sciences. Accurately determining luminescence lifetimes for slow-decaying signals can be challenging. Here, the authors report a fitting algorithm and subsequently experimentally show a method for the rapid measurement of luminescence lifetimes in the microsecond region.