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Updated: Jan 21, 2026

Highly Efficient Ligation of Small RNA Molecules for MicroRNA Quantitation by High-Throughput Sequencing
Published on: November 18, 2014
Stochastic RNA Walkers for Intracellular MicroRNA Imaging
Mingshu Xiao1, Xiwei Wang1, Li Li1
1Shanghai Key Laboratory of Green Chemistry and Chemical Processes, School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering , East China Normal University , 500 Dongchuan Road , Shanghai 200241 , People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
Nucleic acid-based machines have sparked tremendous attention because of their potential applications in biosensing, drug delivery, and biocomputing. Herein, we construct an enzyme-propelled stochastic RNA walker that autonomously walks on a single wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT)-based one-dimensional (1D) track for miRNA imaging in living cells. Driven by duplex-specific nuclease (DSN) with the capability of selective digestion of DNA in the DNA/RNA heteroduplexes, the RNA walker enables autonomous and progressive walk on the SWCNTs, producing amplified signal outputs. As a result, this DSN-powered stochastic RNA walker with high target-recycling kinetic achieves prominent detection performance of miRNA analysis, showing a linear range from 5 fM to 10 pM with a limit of detection of 1.67 fM and one-base mismatch discrimination. Finally, we demonstrated that this nanomachine can be applied for intracellular miRNA imaging.
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