Highly Sensitive Detection of miR-21 through Target-Activated Catalytic Hairpin Assembly of X-Shaped DNA Nanostructures

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are found in extremely low concentrations in cells, so highly sensitive quantitation is a great challenge. Herein, a simple dual-amplification strategy involving target-activated catalytic hairpin assembly (CHA) coupled with multiple fluorophores concentrated on one X-shaped DNA is reported. In this strategy, four hairpin probes (H1, H2, H3, and H4) are modified with FAM and BHQ1 at both sticky ends, while a circulating hairpin probe (H0) is used to activate CHA circuits once it binds to complementary sequences in the target miR-21 (T). The powerful dual-amplification cascades in Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based nonenzymatic nucleic acid circuits are triggered by T-H0-activated formation of the X-shaped DNA nanostructure, freeing T-H0 for the next CHA reaction cycle. CHA circuits increase the fluorescence due to the wide distance between FAM and BHQ1 in the formed X-shaped DNA nanostructure, resulting in signal amplification and highly sensitive detection of miR-21, with a limit of detection (LOD, 3σ) of 0.025 nM, which is 25.6 or 57.6 times lower than that obtained through a single-amplification strategy without multiple fluorophores on one X-shaped DNA or CHA circuit. Furthermore, this cascade reaction was completed in 45 min, effectively avoiding target degradation. This new enzyme-free signal amplification strategy holds promising potential for sensitively detecting different DNA or RNA sequences by simply adapting the fragment of the H0 sequence complementary to the target.