A New Eye Dual-readout Method for MiRNA Detection based on Dissolution of Gold nanoparticles via LSPR by CdTe QDs Photoinduction

Yasaman-Sadat Borghei,Morteza Hosseini

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-41898-4

Abstract

Breast cancer (BC) is the most frequent cancer that affects one in eight women worldwide. Recent advances in early cancer diagnosis anticipates more efficient treatment and prolong patient survival. MicroRNAs expression profiling plays a key role in diagnosis of cancer such as BC in early stages. For the first time we describe direct injection of hot electrons from plasmonic gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) to adsorbed water molecules with photoinduction of CdTe quantum dots (QDs) with emission wavelength at ~560 nm. As a result of hot electrons exiting from AuNPs with red color, gold cations (holes) are gradually discharged (AuNPs dissolution) leading to a colorless solution. Our group applied this phenomenon to propose a spectral method for miRNA recognition based on different responsive disaggregation and aggregation of CdTe QDs interacted with single strand DNA probes and DNA/RNA heteroduplex respectively resulting in a detection limit of 4.4 pM. This method has been applied also for the determination of miR-155 in the human breast carcinoma MCF-7 cells and normal human embryonic kidney cell line (HEK 293).

Highlights

Since the discovery of microRNAs in 1993, they have received extensive interest in biology and clinical research, including the diagnosis and treatment of a variety of diseases such as cancer[1,2,3,4]
It was reported that miR-155 downregulates SOCS1 in breast cancer, in turn leading to persistent activation of STAT3 signaling[13]
Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs)-based localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) as an optical sensor has been widely employed in various fields including disease diagnosis

Summary

Introduction

Since the discovery of microRNAs (miRNAs) in 1993, they have received extensive interest in biology and clinical research, including the diagnosis and treatment of a variety of diseases such as cancer[1,2,3,4]. To determine the effects of hybridization of miRNA targets on LSPR band, various concentrations of miR-155 targets (10–100 pM) were added to 10 μL of DNA probe (100 pM) in 40 μL phosphate buffer (20 mM, pH = 6.5).

Results

Conclusion