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Ultrasensitive fluorescent detection of telomerase activity based on tetrahedral DNA nanostructures as carriers for DNA-templated silver nanoclusters

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Abstract

Precise evaluation of telomerase activity is essential for the clinical diagnosis of early tumors. Herein, we have ingeniously designed a tetrahedral DNA nanostructure, with hairpin-shaped DNA probes rich in cytosine bases at four vertices for telomerase detection. The DNA-templated silver nanoclusters can be formed after the addition of Ag. Then the introduction of telomerase adds the single-strand TTAGGG extension, which can “turn on” the fluorescence of silver nanoclusters quickly by the proximity of the resulting guanine-rich sequences to silver nanoclusters and realize accurate detection of telomerase activity. In this study, integration of high stability tetrahedral DNA nanostructure and fluorescence signal amplification of four DNA-templated silver nanoclusters offers the advantage of high sensitivity, with a low detection limit of 1 cell. More than that, this method is low-cost, facile, and feasible for practical clinical applications.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 81703088), the Medical Research Project of Jiangsu Provincial Health and Family Planning Commission, China (Grant No. H2018113), and Medical Science and Technology Development Foundation, Nanjing Department of Health (YKK19110, YKK20173).

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Author notes

  1. Wenting Cheng and Liangliang Xiang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Laboratory, Gaochun People’s Hospital, Nanjing, 211300, China

    Wenting Cheng, Jianchun Zhang & Ying Sun

  2. The Second Hospital of Nanjing, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, 210003, China

    Liangliang Xiang, Zhaoli Zhang & Jinlong Li

  3. State Key Laboratory of Bioelectronics, School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, China

    Khan Adeel

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  1. Wenting Cheng
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  2. Liangliang Xiang
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  7. Jinlong Li
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Correspondence to Jinlong Li.

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Informed consent was obtained before specimen collection, and the research was supported by the scientific ethical committee of the Second Hospital of Nanjing.

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Cheng, W., Xiang, L., Adeel, K. et al. Ultrasensitive fluorescent detection of telomerase activity based on tetrahedral DNA nanostructures as carriers for DNA-templated silver nanoclusters. Anal Bioanal Chem 414, 2431–2438 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-022-03883-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-022-03883-1

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