Citation: Hongmin Lei, Jie Zhou, Yichen Han, Yaqin Chai, Ruo Yuan. A periodically ordered cruciform DNA nanowire guided-localized HCR for simultaneous and rapid detection and imaging of dual-microRNAs[J]. Chinese Chemical Letters, ;2026, 37(6): 111737. doi: 10.1016/j.cclet.2025.111737 shu

A periodically ordered cruciform DNA nanowire guided-localized HCR for simultaneous and rapid detection and imaging of dual-microRNAs

1.
Key Laboratory of Luminescence Analysis and Molecular Sensing (Southwest University), Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China

yqchai@swu.edu.cn

yuanruo@swu.edu.cn

Received Date: 18 April 2025
Revised Date: 2 August 2025
Accepted Date: 17 August 2025
Available Online: 17 August 2025

Figures(5)

In this work, a periodically ordered cruciform DNA nanowire (POCDN) guided-localized hybridization chain reaction (LHCR) was designed for the simultaneous and rapid detection and imaging of dual-miRNAs in cancer cells. In the presence of the targets miRNA-21 and miRNA-155 associated with breast cancer, the hairpins on both sides of the DNA nanowire were opened to undergo a LHCR, and the trace amount of the target miRNAs were converted into numerous 5-carboxyfluorescein (FAM) and Cy5 signals, which in turn enabled the simultaneous and sensitive detection and visualization of dual-miRNAs targets in malignant tumor cells. Impressively, folic acid (FA) labelled on the structural backbone of DNA nanowires could be specifically targeted to malignant tumor cells with overexpressing the folate receptor, which greatly improved the efficiency of delivery into the cell and enabled precise imaging of intracellular miRNAs without the liposomal transfection. Compared with conventional hybridization chain reaction (HCR), the POCDN-guided LHCR confined the reactants in a compact space, greatly improving the sensitivity of the assay and the reaction rate, with a 5.3-fold reduction in reaction time to just 5 min and detection limits as low as 0.97 and 0.58 pmol/L for miRNA-21 and miRNA-155, respectively. This strategy provides a programmable platform for simultaneous rapid and sensitive detection and precise visualization of multi-miRNAs with eventual applications in bioanalytical studies and potential for future clinical diagnostics of diseases.
- Dna nanowires,
- Dual-miRNAs detection and imaging,
- HCR,
- Fluorescent biosensor,
- Nucleic acid amplification strategy
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1.
沈阳化工大学材料科学与工程学院沈阳 110142