DNAzyme Amplification Research Articles

Triggered Polycatenated DNA Scaffolds for DNA Sensors and Aptasensors by a Combination of Rolling Circle Amplification and DNAzyme Amplification

The concept of triggered polycatenated DNA scaffolds has been elegantly introduced into ultrasensitive biosensing applications by a combination of rolling circle amplification (RCA) and DNAzyme amplification. As compared to traditional methods in which one target could only initiate the formation of one circular template for RCA reaction, in the present study two species of linear single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) monomers are self-assembled into mechanically interlocked polycatenated nanostructures on capture probe-tagged magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) only upon the introduction of one base mutant DNA sequence as initiator for single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) analysis. The resultant topologically polycatenated DNA ladder is further available for RCA process by using the serially ligated circular DNA as template for the synthesis of hemin/G-quadruplex HRP-mimicking DNAzyme chains, which act as biocatalytic labels for the luminol-H(2)O(2) chemiluminescence (CL) system. Notably, the problem of high background induced by excess hemin itself is circumvented by immobilizing the biotinylated RCA products on streptavidin-modified MNPs via biotin-streptavidin interaction. Similarly, a universal strategy is contrived by substitutedly employing aptamer as initiator for the construction of polycatenated DNA scaffolds to accomplish ultrasensitive detection of proteins based on structure-switching of aptamer upon target binding, which is demonstrated by using thrombin as a model analyte in this study. Overall, with two successive amplification steps and one magnetic separation procedure, this flexible biosensing system exhibits not only high sensitivity and specificity with the detection limits of SNPs and thrombin as low as 71 aM and 6.6 pM, respectively, but also excellent performance in real human serum assay with no PCR preamplification for SNPs assay. Given the unique and attractive characteristics, this study illustrates the potential of DNA nanotechnology in bioanalytical applications for both fundamental and practical research.

Electrochemical DNA biosensor based on proximity-dependent DNA ligation assays with DNAzyme amplification of hairpin substrate signal

This paper describes a novel electrochemical DNA sensor for the simple, sensitive and specific detection of nucleic acids based on proximity-dependent DNA ligation assays with the DNAzyme amplification of hairpin substrate signal. A long DNA strand contains the catalytic motif of Mg 2+-dependent 10-23 DNAzyme, acting as the recognition probe. When the target DNA was introduced into the system, part of it was complementary to 5′-end of the recognition probe, resulting in the ligation of a stable duplex, the unbinded part of the target DNA was acted as one binding arm for the DNAzyme. This duplex containing a complete 10-23 DNAzyme structure could cleave the purine–pyrimidine cleavage site of the hairpin substrate, which resulted in the fragmentation of the hairpin structure and the release of two single-stranded nucleic acids, one of which was biotinylated and acted as the signal probe. An immobilized thiolated capture probe could bind with the signal probe, using biotin as a tracer in the signal probe, and streptavidin–alkaline phosphatase (SA–ALP) as reporter molecule. The activity of the immobilized enzyme was voltammetrically determined by measuring the amount of 1-naphthol generated after 5 min of enzymatic dephosphorylation of 1-naphthyl phosphate. The results revealed that the sensor showed a sensitive response to complementary target sequences of H. pylori in a concentration range from 100 fM to 1 nM, with a detection limit of 50 fM. In addition, the sensing system could discriminate the complementary sequence from mismatched sequences, with high sensitivity and reusability.

DNAzyme amplification of molecular beacon signal

This paper reports an improved catalytic molecular beacon. Addition of the target oligonucleotide activates a DNA enzyme (DNAzyme), which, in turn, activates multiple copies of molecular beacons (MB) and gives rise to a strong fluorescence signal. In a previous design, the activated DNAzyme could oligomerize, especially dimerize, and result in inactivation of the DNAzyme. The current design avoids this problem, upon activated by the target DNA, the DNAzyme will stay constantly active. With the improved method, a detection of 10 pM DNA has been demonstrated, which is 1000 times more sensitive than the method previously reported.