DNA Walking and Rolling Nanomachine for Electrochemical Detection of miRNA

miRNAs, a class of endogenous noncoding RNAs, are involved in many crucial biological processes, which have emerged as a new set of biomarkers for disease theranostics. Exploring efficient signal amplification strategy is highly desired to pursue a highly sensitive miRNA biosensing platform. DNA nanotechnology shows great promise in the fabrication of amplified miRNA biosensors. In this work, a novel DNA walking and rolling nanomachine is developed for highly sensitive and selective detection of miRNA. Particularly, this approach programs two forms of dynamic DNA nanomachines powered by corresponding enzymes, which are well integrated. It is able to achieve a limit of detection as low as 39 × 10^-18 m, along with excellent anti-interfering performance and clinical applications. In addition, by designing pH-controlled detachable intermolecular DNA triplex, the main sensing elements can be conveniently reset, which fulfills the requirements of point-of-care profiling of miRNA. The high consistency between the proposed approach and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction validates the robustness and reliability. Therefore, it is anticipated that the DNA walking and rolling nanomachine has attractive application prospects in miRNA assay for biological researches and clinical diagnosis.