Improvement of Ways to Obtain Ethidium Bromide and Synthesis of Ethidium Ethyl Sulfate, a New Fluorescent Dye for Detection of Nucleic Acids

摘要

Two methods for synthesis of ethidium bromide, a fluorescent dye widely used in molecular biology, were improved. An analog of ethidium bromide, ethidium ethyl sulfate, was synthesized. Ethidium bromide (3,8-diamino-5-efhyl-6-phenyl-phenanthridinium bromide) is a fluorescent dye widely used in molecular biology, gene engineering, and diagnostic medicine 1-3. When exposed to UV light, it fluoresces an orange color (590 nm), with the intensity of this emission increasing many times (by a factor of 20-25) upon binding of this dye to double-stranded DNA and RNA 4, which enables detection of nucleic acid in cells and tissues. Modern methods of fluorescent microscopy with ethidium bromide can detect DNA in amounts on the order of 2 ng in a sample 5.