Nucleic acid circuits for cell imaging: From the test tube to the cell

Abstract Integrating nucleic acid circuits (NACs) with functional DNA probes has emerged as a promising platform in the field of biosensing, offering a facile and versatile way of detecting a wide variety of intracellular analytes in live cells. This methodology combines the power of NACs as signal amplifiers and the functional versatility of DNA probe as a molecular recognition. Very recently, several elegant NACs uniquely applicable to fluorescent biosensing systems have been reported to achieve the intracellular imaging of diverse targets. This review serves to highlight recent achievements in this emerging research field and provides a future perspective on where the field is headed.