In 2000, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for the discovery of a unique class of conducting polymer materials which are revolutionizing the electronic and display industries. BD Horizon Brilliant polymer dyes are based on these patented chemistries, which allow the creation of very photostable polymer dyes that are effective at collecting excitation light and efficiently converting it to emitted light at a longer wavelength.

These superior polymer reporters can then be attached to nucleic acid probes and antibodies for use in a variety of assays and applications. They can dramatically increase detection signals (up to 100 times) for sensitivity well beyond existing methods and reagents.

BD Horizon Brilliant polymer chains can be considered as a collection of optical segments. Each segment in the polymer chain is capable of absorbing light, resulting in materials that can have extremely large extinction coefficients (or probability of absorbing photons of light).

As a result of the electronic delocalization inherent to these materials, energy has the ability to move or migrate along these extended chains. Thus, all the light \"harvested\" by the polymers can either be channeled to a closely associated fluorescent acceptor of lower energy through a fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) process, or emitted as fluorescence by the polymer itself if no dyes are used. It is this collective \"molecular antenna\"–like behavior that forms the foundation of the technology and intellectual property base.

Light harvesting base polymers have multiple optical segments that can emit for fluorescence detection.

Conjugated to a reporter dye, these polymers can also serve as donors to create tandem dyes with exceptional Stokes shifts.

BD Horizon Brilliant dyes come in two basic formats: base polymer dyes and polymer tandem dyes.

The base polymer dyes are the simplest embodiment of the technology, are very photostable, and are bright compared to conventional fluorescent dyes. They are very effective at collecting excitation light (like molecular antennae) and efficiently converting it to emitted light at a longer wavelength.

Polymer tandem dyes are composed of two dye molecules: the base polymer \"donor\" dye and a second conventional fluorescent \"acceptor\" dye. The molecules are chemically linked together to form a tandem dye that is excited at the excitation wavelength of the donor and emits at the emission wavelength of the acceptor. These tandem dyes are very bright compared to conventional tandem dyes.

One of the future goals for this technology is to design base polymer dyes and polymer tandem dyes that can be easily multiplexed to make multicolor flow cytometry easier.

View data from our latest BD Horizon Brilliant dyes.