Nicking enzyme-assisted amplification (NEAA) technology and its applications: A review

Nucleic acid isothermal amplification detection technologies have undergone rapid development in the field of molecular diagnosis due to their freedom from the limitations of complex temperature control equipment. In recent years, with the use of newly discovered nicking endonucleases, a novel isothermal amplification technique, -nicking enzyme-assisted amplification (NEAA), has been developed. NEAA reactions offer high levels of amplification efficiency and can exponentially amplify a target nucleic acid over a very short period of time. NEAA has been widely used in many fields, including those of molecular diagnosis, disease detection, biochemical identification, and many more. NEAA reactions also present some drawbacks, (e.g., severe non-specific amplification and strong background signals.) The principle, advantages and disadvantages of NEAA technologies are discussed. Applications and comparisons of NEAA to similar methods are described in this review. We hope that this review will serve as inspiration for further NEAA research.