Sensitive detection of a serum biomarker based on peptide nucleic acid-coupled dual cycling reactions

Serum level of disease markers may provide important guidance for diagnosis and prognosis. In this work, a sensitive and specific method suitable for direct serum detection of biomarkers is developed based on peptide nucleic acid (PNA)-coupled DNA cycling reactions with dual amplification. In this method, PNA released from a target-triggered homogeneous DNA cycling is employed to initiate an interface DNA cycling, and both of the cycling reactions are based on polymerase-assisted strand displacement reaction. Consequently, two PNA-coupled DNA cycling steps can take place simultaneously in one-pot, leading to greatly enhanced limit of detection and simplified operation. This method has also been successfully applied for evaluating serum insulin in pregnant women as an indicator of gestational diabetes mellitus. So the application of this method in real bio-samples may allow it to hold considerable potential in clinical practice. In addition, since there is no requirement for specific sequence of aptamer, the strategy proposed can be extended for the detection of many other protein markers and peptide-hormones in the future.