Soil pH is probably the single most informative measurement that can be made to determine soil characteristics. At a single glance, pH tells much more about a soil than merely indicating whether it is acidic or basic. For example, availability of essential nutrients and toxicity of other elements can be estimated because of their known relationship with pH. The term pH was "invented" by the Swedish scientist Sorensen (1909) in order to obtain more convenient numbers and the idea quickly caught on. Gillespie and Hurst (1918) seem to have been among the earliest to determine pH (or PH, as it was then called) electrometrically using a platinum-palladium blackhydrogen gas electrode, a calomel reference electrode and a fairly cumbersome potentiometer and galvanometer system. At that period, it was still much more common to use colorimetric methods with indicator dyes than the electrometric method. This changed rapidly, however. Sharp and Hoagland (1919) used a similar but less involved method than Gillespie and Hurst (1918) and Healy and Karraker (1922) used a commercially available platinum-hydrogen gas electrode, potentiometer and galvanometer which had been designed by Clark (1920). The decade of the 1920s saw the development of the quinhydrone electrode which was less fragile and much less expensive than the hydrogen-platinum electrode. But, it was the development of the glass electrode in the 1930s that brought the determination of pH very rapidly to its present importance and convenience. The Beckman Model G pH meter (circa 1931) was practically indestructible and could be used as a portable as well as a laboratory instrument. Although it was cumbersome by today's standards, it was virtually foolproof (except for the constantly failing batteries) and many are still capable of operating if not actually operating today. As recently as two decades ago, the use of the small, handheld portable pH meters then available to determine pH in the field was a very imprecise and hazardous undertaking because both electrodes and meters were subject to sudden failures but this has changed rather abruptly in the last few years. Microcircuitry and plastic have contributed to rugged pH meters and electrodes that withstand
Nucleic acid amplification is the basis for many molecular diagnostic assays. In these cases, the amplification product must be detected and analyzed, typically requiring extended workflow time, sophisticated equipment, or both. Here we present a novel method of amplification detection that harnesses the pH change resulting from amplification reactions performed with minimal buffering capacity. In loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) reactions, we achieved rapid (<30 min) and sensitive (<10 copies) visual detection using pH-sensitive dyes. Additionally, the detection can be performed in real time, enabling high-throughput or quantitative applications. We also demonstrate this visual detection for another isothermal amplification method (strand-displacement amplification), PCR, and reverse transcription LAMP (RT-LAMP) detection of RNA. The colorimetric detection of amplification presented here represents a generally applicable approach for visual detection of nucleic acid amplification, enabling molecular diagnostic tests to be analyzed immediately without the need for specialized and expensive instrumentation.
Jingfang Shangguan, Dinggeng He, Xiaoxiao He
et al.
Measuring pH in living cells is of great importance for better understanding cellular functions as well as providing pivotal assistance for early diagnosis of diseases. In this work, we report the first use of a novel kind of label-free carbon dots for intracellular ratiometric fluorescence pH sensing. By simple one-pot hydrothermal treatment of citric acid and basic fuchsin, the carbon dots showing dual emission bands at 475 and 545 nm under single-wavelength excitation were synthesized. It is demonstrated that the fluorescence intensities of the as-synthesized carbon dots at the two emissions are pH-sensitive simultaneously. The intensity ratio (I475 nm/I545 nm) is linear against pH values from 5.2 to 8.8 in buffer solution, affording the capability as ratiometric probes for intracellular pH sensing. It also displays that the carbon dots show excellent reversibility and photostability in pH measurements. With this nanoprobe, quantitative fluorescence imaging using the ratio of two emissions (I475 nm/I545 nm) for the detection of intracellular pH were successfully applied in HeLa cells. In contrast to most of the reported nanomaterials-based ratiometric pH sensors which rely on the attachment of additional dyes, these carbon-dots-based ratiometric probes are low in toxicity, easy to synthesize, and free from labels.