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Electrochemiluminescent carbon dot-based determination of microRNA-21 by using a hemin/G-wire supramolecular nanostructure as co-reaction accelerator

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Abstract

An efficient coreaction accelerator scheme is introduced in an electrochemiluminescence (ECL) based method for sensitive determination of microRNA-21. It is making use of a domino type hemin/G-wire supramolecular DNA nanostructure (where “G-wire” represents a guanine-rich DNA structure) without a base pairing dependence. A glassy carbon electrode was modified with carbon dots (prepared from fullerene) and TiO2 nanoneedles. In the first step, a first hairpin 1 (H1) binds to microRNA-21 to form the hybridized complex in solution. This is followed by a T7 exonuclease (T7 Exo)-assisted target recycling to obtain a simulated target which can unfold hairpin 2 (H2) to form a double-stranded structure. After cleavage by T7 Exo, the G-rich sequences in H2 re-fold into G-quadruplexes on the electrode to form hemin/G-wire supramolecular nanostructure with the strand 1 (S1, a custom-made G-rich sequence) and hemin. As a result, the hemin/G-wire catalyzes the reaction of peroxothiosulfate that generates ECL. Thus, the signal is strongly enhanced. The method allows for the determination of microRNA-21 with a detection limit as low as 0.1 fM. It is conceived to represent a valuable tool in cancer research.

The hemin/G-wire supramolecular nanostructures assembled on a carbon dot (CD)-based glassy carbon electrode (GCE), thereby achieving electrochemiluminescence (ECL) signal amplification of the CD/S2O82− system and sensitive detection of microRNA-21.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the NNSF of China (21775124, 21575116, 21675129, 51473136,21675130), the Natural Science Foundation Project of CQ CSTC (cstc2018jcyjAX0546) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (XDJK2018AA003), China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Luminescence and Real-Time Analysis, Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, People’s Republic of China

    Rui Zhang, Anyi Chen, Yanqing Yu, Yaqin Chai, Ying Zhuo & Ruo Yuan

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  1. Rui Zhang
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  2. Anyi Chen
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  3. Yanqing Yu
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Correspondence to Ying Zhuo or Ruo Yuan.

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Zhang, R., Chen, A., Yu, Y. et al. Electrochemiluminescent carbon dot-based determination of microRNA-21 by using a hemin/G-wire supramolecular nanostructure as co-reaction accelerator. Microchim Acta 185, 432 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00604-018-2959-3

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