Acquisition of a liquid scintillation counter

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Many important biological processes are directly related to interactions involving DNA, RNA and proteins. Most of these interactions require to monitor very small concentrations of materials, often in the picomolar (10-12 molar) order of magnitude. A wide array of fluorescent approaches is employed to monitor biochemical interactions. However, such fluorescence-based measurements do not provide the sensitivity and ease of use that are still required in a large majority of biochemical assays involving compounds found in very low concentrations. Such limitation is not present when using radiolabeling technology, effectively allowing the measurement of many substances occurring in picomolar concentrations. Interestingly, the non-invasive nature of radiolabels introduces minimal perturbations in studied systems. Furthermore, in addition to detecting the presence of a large array of biological molecules in any model system, the use of radiolabelling has allowed the development of very powerful experimental techniques whereby dual labels are employed to simultaneously detect and distinguish two compounds of interest. The use of radiolabelling has also permitted to develop pulse-chase methods to monitor a substance at various time after its synthesis among a complex mixture of related compounds. Although these assays involve different systems, they nevertheless all depend on the precise detection of radiolabels, which are essential components of these techniques. It is thus vital that our department has access to a high performance scintillation counter allowing us to accurately quantify radiolabels.