High-Resolution Vertical Polarization Excited Dark-Field Microscopic Imaging of Anisotropic Gold Nanorods for the Sensitive Detection and Spatial Imaging of Intracellular microRNA-21

As an important biomarker for early diagnosis of cancers, sensitive detection and high-resolution imaging of microRNA-21 in cancer cells have become important and challengeable. In this work, highly sensitive detection and spatial imaging of intracellular microRNA-21 were realized by the reduced signal background through vertical polarization excitation with a polarizer. The lateral local surface plasmon resonance property of gold nanorods (AuNRs) displayed a pronounced green color with low scattering intensity, which was adjusted to red color with strong scattering intensity when the core–satellite gold nanoparticle (AuNP) assembly was constructed on the side of AuNRs through a catalyzed hairpin assembly (CHA) circuit in the presence of microRNA-21. This unique approach allows for effectively reducing the strong background signal to improve the sensitivity of detection. Additionally, the proposed strategy can not only realize the sensitive detection of microRNA-21 with the limit of detection as low as 2 pM (3σ) but also achieve the high spatial imaging of cancer cells, which provided a specific strategy for the construction and imaging of intracellular imaging probes. It is believed that the simple and sensitive approach on the basis of lateral local surface plasmon resonance property of anisotropic AuNRs with excellent sensitivity combined with high spatial imaging holds promising potentials to visualize intracellular microRNAs with low abundance.