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Updated: Aug 6, 2026
In vitro Assembly of Semi-artificial Molecular Machine and its Use for Detection of DNA Damage
Published on: January 11, 2012
A dual-core 3D DNA nanomachine based on DNAzyme positive feedback loop for highly sensitive MicroRNA imaging in
Jinshen Li1, Shixiu Xiao1, Xin Wang1
1State Key Laboratory for Chemistry and Molecular Engineering of Medicinal Resources, Key Laboratory for Chemistry and Molecular Engineering of Medicinal Resources (Ministry of Education of China), School of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin, 541004, China.
Abstract:
A double 3D DNA walker nanomachine by DNAzyme self-driven positive feedback loop amplification for the detection of miRNA was constructed. This method uses two gold nanoparticles as the reaction core, and because of the spatial confinement effect the local concentration of the reactants increase the collision efficiency was greatly improved. Meanwhile, the introduction of positive feedback loop promotes the conversion efficiency. In presence of miRNA-21, a large amount of DNAzyme was released and hydrolyze the reporter probe, resulting the recovery of fluorescence signal. The linear range for miRNA-21 is 0.5-60 pmol/L, and the detection limit is 0.41 pmol/L (S/N = 3). This nanomachine has been successfully used for accurate detection of miRNA-21 expression levels in cell lysates. At the same time, it can enter cells for intracellular miRNA-21 fluorescence imaging, distinguishing tumor cells from normal cells. This combination of in vitro detection and imaging analysis of living cells can achieve the goal of jointly detecting cancer markers through multiple pathways, providing new ideas for early diagnosis and screening of diseases.
