A versatile biosensing platform coupling CRISPR-Cas12a and aptamers for detection of diverse analytes

Rapid and sensitive detection of various analytes is in high demand. Apart from its application in genome editing, CRISPR-Cas also shows promises in nucleic acid detection applications. To further exploit the potential of CRISPR-Cas for detection of diverse analytes, we present a versatile biosensing platform that couples the excellent affinity of aptamers for broad-range analytes with the collateral single-strand DNA cleavage activity of CRISPR-Cas12a. We demonstrated that the biosensors developed by this platform can be used to detect protein and small molecule in human serum with a complicated background, i.e., the tumor marker alpha fetoprotein and cocaine with the detection limits of 0.07 fmol/L and 0.34 μmol/L, respectively, highlighting the advantages of simplicity, sensitivity, short detection time, and low cost compared with the state-of-the-art biosensing approaches. Altogether, this biosensing platform with plug-and-play design show great potential in the detection of diverse analytes.