eLCR: electrochemical detection of single DNA base changes via ligase chain reaction

Simple, inexpensive and wide-scaled analysis of single DNA base changes ('point mutations' which include SNP's, somatic mutations and epigenetic changes) is one of the holy grail's of point-of-care diagnostics. Herein, we present eLCR: a simple methodology that fuses Ligase Chain Reaction (LCR) with electrochemical detection based on DNA-mediated charge transport. LCR generates long and short "knife" motifs representing the presence or absence of single DNA base changes, which are then detected electrochemically by either methylene blue intercalation or horseradish peroxidase labelling.