Determination of DNA methylation using electrochemiluminescence with surface accumulable coreactant

Cytosine methylation in DNA was determined by an enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) with electrochemiluminescence (ECL) detection and employed for the DNA methylation assay of a long and real genomic sample for the first time. The developed method employed an antimethyl cytosine antibody labeled with acetylcholinesterase, which was added to recognize single methylated cytosine in a DNA oligomer. The acetylcholinesterase converted acetylthiocholine (substrate) to thiocholine (product), which was accumulated on a gold electrode surface via gold-thiol binding. This surface accumulated preconcentration made it possible to observe bright and distinctive ECL by applying a potential to the gold electrode in the presence of a tris(2,2-bipyridyl)ruthenium complex luminophore when the analyte DNA contained a methylation region. Methyl-cytosine was measured quantitatively in the 1-100 pmol range, which exhibits sufficiently high sensitivity to achieve real DNA measurements without amplification by a polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The proposed ECL method also exhibited high selectivity for methyl-cytosine against nonmethylated cytosine, guanine, thymine, and adenine nucleotides. Finally, original and methylated DNA samples were clearly distinguished with our method using a real DNA bacteriophage sample (48,502 base pairs).