19 Facts About Acridine orange

Acridine orange is an organic compound that serves as a nucleic acid-selective fluorescent dye with cationic properties useful for cell cycle determination.

Acridine orange is cell-permeable, which allows the dye to interact with DNA by intercalation, or RNA via electrostatic attractions.

When bound to DNA, acridine orange is very similar spectrally to an organic compound known as fluorescein.

Acridine orange is able to withstand low pH environments, allowing the fluorescent dye to penetrate acidic organelles such as lysosomes and phagolysosomes that are membrane-bound organelles essential for acid hydrolysis or for producing products of phagocytosis of apoptotic cells.

Acridine orange is used in epifluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry.

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The differential staining capability of acridine orange provides quick scanning of specimen smears at lower magnifications of 400x compared to Gram stains that operate at 1000x magnification.

The maximum excitation and emission value that occur when acridine orange is bound to RNA are the result of electrostatic interactions and the intercalation between the acridine molecule and nucleic acid-base pairs present within RNA and DNA.

Acridine orange is derived from the organic molecule acridine, which was first discovered by Carl Grabe and Heinrich Caro, who isolated acridine by boiling coal in Germany during the late nineteenth century.

Acridine orange has antimicrobial factors useful in drug-resistant bacteria and isolating bacteria in various environments.

Additionally, the method of acridine orange direct count proved useful in the enumeration of bacteria found within landfills.

Direct epifluorescent filter technique using acridine orange is a method known for examining the microbial content within food and water.

Past and present studies comparing acridine orange staining with blind subcultures for the detection of positive blood cultures showed that the acridine orange is a simple, inexpensive, rapid staining procedure that appears to be more sensitive than the Gram stain for detecting microorganisms in cerebrospinal fluid and other clinical and non-clinical materials.

Acridine orange has been widely accepted and used in many different areas, such as epifluorescence microscopy, and the assessment of sperm chromatin quality.

Acridine orange is useful in the rapid screening of ordinarily sterile specimens.

Acridine orange is recommended for the use of fluorescent microscopic detection of microorganisms in smears prepared from clinical and non-clinical materials.

Acridine orange staining has to be performed at an acidic pH to obtain the differential staining, which allows bacterial cells to stain orange and tissue components to stain yellow or green.

Acridine orange is used to stain acidic vacuoles, RNA, and DNA in living cells.

Under specific conditions of ionic strength and concentration, acridine orange emits red fluorescence when it binds to RNA by stacking interactions, and green fluorescence when it binds to DNA by intercalation.

Acridine orange can be used in conjunction with ethidium bromide or propidium iodide to differentiate between viable, apoptotic, and necrotic cells.