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Updated: Feb 6, 2026

Telomerase Activity in the Various Regions of Mouse Brain: Non-Radioactive Telomerase Repeat Amplification Protocol TRAP Assay
Published on: September 2, 2014
Ultrasensitive detection of telomerase activity in a single cell using stem-loop primer-mediated exponential
Honghong Wang1, Hui Wang1, Chenghui Liu1
1Key Laboratory of Applied Surface and Colloid Chemistry , Ministry of Education , Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Science of Shaanxi Province , School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering , Shaanxi Normal University , Xi'an 710062 , Shaanxi Province , P. R. China . Email: liuch@snnu.edu.cn ;
Abstract:
Telomerase is a crucial biomarker for cancers. Its reliable and sensitive detection, particularly in a single cell, has great significance for the early diagnosis of cancers, studies on tumor progression and anticancer therapy, which remain a challenge, due to nonspecific amplification. Herein, we developed a novel stem-loop primer-mediated exponential amplification (SPEA) strategy, which can specifically and efficiently amplify the telomerase-elongated telomere repeat unit with near zero nonspecific signal. The SPEA-based assay can accurately detect telomerase activity in the crude lysate of a single cell and is suited for detecting the cellular heterogeneity arising from cell-to-cell variations.
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