Luminescence assays are becoming more popular in high throughput screening (HTS) laboratories with the luciferase reporter gene being the most common. As with other assays that are adapted to HTS, improvements have been made to the luciferase assay to make it better suited to the requirements of HTS. For the luciferase reporter gene, these improvements included stabilization of the enzyme, increasing the half-life of the luminescence signal to 5 h, and eliminating separation steps (centrifugation and aliquot transfer) after cell lysis. The improved assay, LucLite, is homogeneous and is measured directly in the cell culture media. In addition to reagent improvements, a temperature-controlled, multidetector microplate counter, TopCount, can quickly and accurately measure luminescence signals.
References
1.
Scheirer, W. (1996). Reporter gene assays application in high throughput screening. In High Throughput Screening: The Discovery of Bioactive Substances. (J. Devlin and R. Wallace (eds). Marcel Dekker, New York, in press.
2.
Scheirer, W., Roelant, C., Bums, D., (1994). Introduction to LucLite: A bioluminescent reagent system for reporter gene assays. Lite Guides: LGA-002, Packard Instrument Company, 1994.
3.
Neumann, K. (1995). High throughput luminescence assays using six detectors. TopCount Topics: TCA-023, Packard Instrument Company.
