Stabilization of ssRNA on graphene oxide surface: an effective way to design highly robust RNA probes

RNA probes constitute an important class of functional nucleic acids (FNAs). However, because of their notorious vulnerability to enzymatic degradation, extremely careful and special protocols must be followed when dealing with RNA probes. To fully use the large number of RNA FNAs available for bioanalysis and biomedicine, it is important to explore effective methods to protect RNA probes from enzymatic digestion. In this work, we systematically demonstrate that graphene oxide (GO) can effectively protect RNA probes from enzymatic digestion. Based on this finding, we propose an effective way to design robust RNA biosensors by simply mixing RNA probes with GO for analysis of nucleic acids, proteins, and small molecules. The entire assay is sensitive, selective, rapid, and more importantly, does not require any special protocols. The ability to protect ssRNA from enzymatic digestion by GO offers an exciting new way to stabilize ssRNA, which will not only provide new opportunities to utilize the large number of currently available, yet rarely explored, RNA FNAs for bioanalysis but also offer a new solution to protect important ssRNA molecules, such as microRNA and antisense ssRNA, for a great variety of biomedical applications.