Label-free chemiluminescent aptasensor for platelet-derived growth factor detection based on exonuclease-assisted cascade autocatalytic recycling amplification

Abstract

Here an exonuclease III (Exo III)-assisted cascade autocatalytic recycling amplification (Exo-CARA) strategy is proposed for label-free chemiluminescent (CL) detection of platelet-derived growth factor BB (PDGF-BB) by taking advantage of both recognition property of aptamer and cleavage function of Exo III. Functionally, this system consists of a duplex DNA (aptamer–blocker hybrid), two kinds of hairpin structures (MB1 and MB2), and Exo III. Upon recognizing and binding with PDGF-BB, aptamer folds into a close configuration, which initiates the proposed Exo-CARA reaction (Recyclings I→II→III→II). Finally, numerous “caged” G-quadruplex sequences on DNAzyme1 and DNAzyme2 release that intercalate hemin to catalyze the oxidation of luminol by H2O2 to generate an amplified CL signal, achieving excellent specificity and high sensitivity with a detection limit of 6.8×10−13M PDGF-BB. The proposed strategy has the advantages of simple design, isothermal conditions, homogeneous reaction without separation and washing steps, effective-cost without the need of labeling, and high amplification efficiency, which might be a universal and promising protocol for the detection of a variety of biomolecules whose aptamers undergo similar conformational changes.