Detection of Promyelocytic Leukemia/Retinoic Acid Receptor α (PML/RARα) Fusion Gene with Functionalized Graphene Oxide

Ran Li,Xiuhua Chen,Yaofang Zhang,Hongwei Wang,Yanhong Tan,Fanggang Ren,Zhifang Xu

doi:10.3390/ijms140612863

Abstract

An attempt was made to use functionalized graphene oxide (GO) to detect the Promyelocytic leukemia/Retinoic acid receptor α fusion gene (PML/RARα fusion gene), a marker gene of acute promyelocytic leukemia. The functionalized GO was prepared by chemical exfoliation method, followed by a polyethylene glycol grafting. It is found that the functionalized GO can selectively adsorb the fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-labeled single-stranded DNA probe and quench its fluorescence. The probe can be displaced by the PML/RARα fusion gene to restore the fluorescence, which can be detected by laser confocal microscopy and flow cytometry. These can be used to detect the presence of the PML/RARα fusion gene. This detection method is verified to be fast, simple and reliable.

Highlights

Nanotechnology is a cutting-edge high technology of the 21st century, which is being used more and more in the field of medical diagnostics [1]
There is green fluorescent signal in the experimental NB4 group cells as shown in Figure 3d if the fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-labeled single-stranded DNA probe was intervened since the promyelocytic leukemia (PML)/retinoic acid receptor α (RARα) fusion gene combines with the FITC-labeled single-stranded DNA probe quenched by the functionalized graphene oxide (GO) and the fluorescence emission of the probe is restored
The present experiment shows an effective method for the detection of PML/RARα fusion gene with an aid of the functionalized GO

Summary

Introduction

Nanotechnology is a cutting-edge high technology of the 21st century, which is being used more and more in the field of medical diagnostics [1]. Graphene is the world’s thinnest novel two-dimensional nanomaterials with a thickness of only 0.35 nm It becomes a hotspot in the field of nanotechnology. The graphene oxide (GO), an oxidative derivative of graphene, has oxygen-containing functional groups in graphene edge or plane, such as hydroxyl, carbonyl, carboxyl [15,16] The presence of these functional groups in GO makes it biocompatible, stable in hydrophilic solution, and compatible with polymers. These groups are conducive to the chemical functionalization to achieve targeted applications in different areas, especially in biomedical field [17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion