Accurate and visual discrimination of single-base mismatch by utilization of binary DNA probes in gold...

Herein we report a colorimetric biosensing strategy to discriminate single-nucleotide mutation in DNA with high selectivity using unmodified gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) as indicators. In the AuNPs-based colorimetric strategy, binary DNA probes were produced by splitting a long DNA probe in the middle for sensitive differentiation of single-base mismatch. The detection limit of this method toward target DNA was 5nM. The developed system has superior advantages of utilization of inexpensive materials, simplicity and visualization. Moreover, binary DNA probes not only can distinguish single-base mutation in the target DNA very well, as compared to long DNA probe, but also can construct "AND" logic gate using two distinct target DNAs as inputs, which holds great potential for increasing the accuracy of disease diagnosis in clinical applications.