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Updated: Jul 5, 2026

Rapid Colorimetric Assays to Qualitatively Distinguish RNA and DNA in Biomolecular Samples
Published on: February 4, 2013
[Spectrophotometric determination of deoxyribonucleic acid by its quenching effect on acridine orange]
Wen-Hui Si1, Yan-Qin Zi, Yi-Feng Tu
1College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Suzhou University, Suzhou 215123, China.
Abstract:
Based on the reaction of acridine orange with deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), and under the optimized condition, a novel method to determine the DNA was developed with the spectrophotometry. The absorbance of acridine orange at the maximum absorption wavelength of 444 nm responded to the concentration of DNA negatively with excellent linearity. It has an upper linear limit concentration of 8.0 microg x mL(-1) and a detection limit of 0.12 microg x mL(-1) with the correlation coefficient of 0.999 8. The method is simple, rapid and sensitive, and could be applied to sample assay satisfactorily. Finally, the reaction mechanism is discussed.

