Direct energy transfer from conjugated polymer to DNA intercalated dye: label-free fluorescent DNA detection

The development of methods for DNA detection is of importance in disease diagnosis, gene-targeted drug discovery and molecular biology field. In this paper, we synthesize a new cationic water-soluble CP containing fluorene moiety and flexible ethylenic moiety in the backbone (PFV) for label-free DNA detection. The conformational freedom of PFV provides stronger interactions with double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) and optimizes the orientation of transition moments between PFV and ethidium bromide (EB) intercalated in dsDNA. The efficient FRET from PFV (donor) to EB (acceptor) intercalated in dsDNA is observed and the emission of EB is amplified by the good light-harvesting ability of conjugated polymers. The interactions between PFV and DNA can also be probed by measuring the FRET ratio between PFV and EB intercalated in DNA. In comparison to other DNA detection assays based on FRET and conjugated polymers, synthesis of dye-labeled DNA probe is avoided in our method, which significantly reduces the cost and the synthetic complexity. The PFV/dsDNA/EB system provides promising applications on DNA detection with a simply, fast and label-free manner.