DNA Nanoswitches as Versatile RNA Biosensors

Abstract

The field of DNA nanotechnology has evolved from design and construction of structures to application-oriented devices in biosensing and drug delivery. Detection of biomarkers is critically important for biomarker discovery and developing a mechanistic understanding of diseases. While there has been an explosion in recent years of technologies for various biosensing applications, many of these methods are complex, impractical, costly, or target specific. We have developed DNA-based nanoswitches that overcome these difficulties, enabling detection and analysis of a wide range of biological molecules with a highly-sensitive yet simple and low-cost method that can be used in any lab. Our technique uses recently developed approaches in DNA nanotechnology to construct “programmable” biosensors that undergo a conformational change in the presence of a target molecule. This conformational change can be easily detected using standard gel electrophoresis, a technique already familiar to most research labs. We have used the DNA nanoswitches for microRNA and Zika viral RNA detection with multiplexed detection in each case. Due to the programmability afforded by the DNA nanotechnology approach, this can act as a nearly universal biosensor, able to detect everything from small molecules to microRNA to proteins.