UV LED for FP analysis?

[sefrem]

Hi there,

I was wondering if there was a way to modify the code such that we can use the UV LED in the same way we can use the other LEDs for fluorescent protein analysis over time? This would be at a low intensity to avoid harming the cells too much.

As well, I tried doing a test with the UV light where i kept the current at 0.5 and switched it on while the glass vessel was filled with a solution of water + 5 mg/ml tryptophan. However, for some reason when i clicked “measure” in the spectrometer section (even with the gain set very high), I don’t really see a value above 1 or 2 in the 410 nm filter reading (tryptophan’s peak emission is 360ish nm but id still expect to see some of the peak with a 29 nm filter baseband). Of course, I can’t visibly see whether or not it’s on either, so is there any way to verify that the UV light is working?

Thank you!

[harrison]

Hi Sefrem,

If you turn on the LED there should be a faint glow in the visible range you can see. It is quite high up on the side board on the reactor, directly above the main LED (i.e. the white one with lens).
You could modify the code in this way, by messing with the measureFP function to instead turn on the UV LED.

In practice the UV LED is fairly small optical output power (i.e. because UV LEDs are far less efficient than visible light ones), and on top of this it is a smaller/less input power device than the main multi-colour LED in the system, hence it might be difficult to get particularly strong fluorescence signals out of it…
I guess the best bet is to try to make the strongest fluorescent concentrated solution you can and put that in and see how much signal you get, but I have a feeling it will be still on the low side!

[Author]

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