Investigation of the decontaminating activity of different disinfectant classes against nucleic acids

Contamination of laboratory surfaces with nucleic acids and their amplicons is one of the most important problems encountered in nucleic acid amplification methods due to the occurrence of unreliable results. The aim of this study was to select and determine effective regimens for the use of various active agents for decontamination in PCR laboratories. The ability of ethyl alcohol, alkyldimethylbenzylammonium chloride, N,N-bis(3-aminopropyl)dodecylamine, polyhexamethyleneguanidine hydrochloride, hydrogen peroxide, peracetic acid, chlorine dioxide, sodium hypochlorite and neutral anolyte to destroy or irreversibly modify DNA, preventing its subsequent amplification was studied. The decontamination activity was analyzed by simulating the surface contamination with both long (1500 bp) and short (94 bp) amplicons. Hydrogen peroxide 2?%, peracetic acid 0.24?%, dichloroisocyanuric acid 0.01?%, sodium hypochlorite 0.1?% and chlorine dioxide 0.01?% were shown to have decontaminating ability. Notably, dichloroisocyanuric acid decontaminated surfaces from DNA at a concentration 20 times lower than previously described, and sodium hypochlorite at half the concentration, and chlorine dioxide was also found to have decontaminating activity. The absence of decontaminating activity was observed in ethyl alcohol 70?%, alkyldimethylbenzylammonium chloride 2?%, N,N-bis(3-aminopropyl)dodecylamine 2?%, polyhexamethyleneguanidine hydrochloride 2?% and neutral anolyte 0,05?%. The results obtained allow expanding the list of disinfectants recommended for decontamination measures in laboratories using nucleic acid amplification methods in order to prevent contamination of nucleic acids and their amplicons. Keywords: PCR, DNA, amplicons, decontamination, disinfectants.