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Ultrasensitive fluorescence detection of microRNA through DNA-induced assembly of carbon dots on gold nanoparticles with no signal amplification strategy

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Abstract

An ultrasensitive fluorescence assay strategy on the basis of carbon dots (CDs) and cDNA-modified gold nanoparticles (AuNP-cDNA) was developed for the determination of microRNA-21 (miRNA-21) via internal filtering effect (IFE). Positively charged CDs (PEI-CDs), the fluorophores in IFE, were synthesized via a hydrothermal method using polyethyleneimine (PEI) as surface ligand. The maximum emission wavelength is located at 500 nm under the excitation of 410 nm. AuNPs, the absorbers, were modified with single-stranded DNA (cDNA), which is completely complementary to miRNA-21. The fluorescence of PEI-CDs is quenched due to the assembly of PEI-CDs and AuNPs-cDNA. In the presence of miRNA-21, the hybridization between miRNA-21 and cDNA causes the release of PEI-CDs and the recovery of fluorescence intensity.The fluorescence recovery degree is linearly correlated with the logarithm of miRNA-21 concentration in the range of 1–1000 fM. This method can be applied to determine miRNA-21 in real serum samples, and the detection results are in well agreement with those of qRT-PCR. The determination of miRNA-21 spiked into diluted human serum samples displays satisfactory recovery within the range 88.44–112.7%, which confirmed the reliability for miRNAs detection in real samples.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21804117), the Key Scientific and Technological Project of Henan Province (182102310703), and the Nanhu Scholars Program for Young Scholars of Xinyang Normal University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang, 464000, China

    Mengyuan He, Ning Shang, Bo Zheng, Gege Yue, Xi Han & Xuebo Hu

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  1. Mengyuan He
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He, M., Shang, N., Zheng, B. et al. Ultrasensitive fluorescence detection of microRNA through DNA-induced assembly of carbon dots on gold nanoparticles with no signal amplification strategy. Microchim Acta 189, 217 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00604-022-05309-2

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