Engineering an endonuclease-assisted rolling circle amplification synergistically catalyzing hairpin assembly mediated fluorescence platform for miR-21 detection

As one of the earliest miRNAs discovered in the human genome, miRNA-21 can provide vital information for the early diagnosis, drug treatment, and prognosis of cancers. Herein, we construct a fast, time-saving fluorescence detection system for miRNA-21 detection by coalescing the improved endonuclease-mediated rolling circle amplification with catalytic hairpin assembly (RCA-NESA-CHA). Firstly, the target miRNA cyclized the padlock, initiating rolling circle amplification (RCA) and extending a long-concatenated DNA. The modified Protector bonded with the long-strand DNA to generate an endonuclease-specific site and trigger the nicking process. Finally, DNA products with repetitive sequences not only recombined with the padlock to reactivate a new recycle of RCA but also triggered the catalytic hairpin assembly to form the H1-H2 complex, realizing the cooperative amplification of the signal. In this system, RCA-NESA and CHA were integrated into one step, which essentially simplifies the sensing process. Moreover, the introduction of the Protector would inhibit the extension reaction caused by the combination of the padlock and the RCA products, slowing down the non-specific reaction time and improving the sensitivity of the fluorescence detection system. Under the optimal experimental conditions, the fluorescence system achieved a limit-of-detection of 0.025 amol miR-21 in a 40 μL sample and successfully applied to miR-21 detection in serum samples from breast cancer patients, showing good agreement with the results of RT-PCR, which exhibited great potential in biomedical research and clinical diagnosis.