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Updated: Oct 12, 2025
Detection and Monitoring of Tumor Associated Circulating DNA in Patient Biofluids
Published on: June 8, 2019
A fluorescence strategy for circRNA quantification in tumor cells based on T7 nuclease-assisted cycling enzymatic
Hongke Qu1, Mingjian Chen2, Junshang Ge2
1NHC Key Laboratory of Carcinogenesis and Human Key Laboratory of Cancer Metabolism, Hunan Cancer Hospital and the Affiliated Cancer Hospital of Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China; Key Laboratory of Carcinogenesis and Cancer Invasion of the Chinese Ministry of Education, Cancer Research Institute and School of Basic Medicine Sciences, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China.
Abstract:
Circular Ribonucleic Acid (CircRNA) plays regulatory roles in many biological processes, such as tumors and metabolic diseases. Due to the fact that circRNA is more stable and conservative than linear RNA, circRNA has become a potential biomarker in early clinical diagnosis and biomedical research. Therefore, the quantification of circRNA expression level is of importance for understanding their functions and their applications for disease diagnosis and treatment. Nevertheless, due to the low abundance of circRNA, it is still a challenge for the analysis of circRNA in cells. Herein, we proposed a sensitive detection method for circRNA based on the T7 exonuclease-assisted cycling enzymatic amplification. The fluorescent sensor was constructed by a hairpin molecular beacon and T7 exonuclease. With the cycling enzymatic amplification process, this sensor achieved the limit of detection of 1 pM with a good linear correlation in the range of 0-100 pM (R2 = 0.9891) using circBART2.2 as a model. Furthermore, we applied the proposed method in the determination of circBART2.2 in cell lysates. The results demonstrated that this method has promising applications in early diagnosis of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection-related diseases using circRNA as the biomarker.
