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Cascaded DNA circuits-programmed self-assembly of spherical nucleic acids for high signal amplification

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Abstract

Signal amplification is an important issue in DNA nanotechnology and molecular diagnostics. In this work, we report a strategy for the catalytic self-assembly of spherical nucleic acids (SNAs) programmed by two-layer cascaded DNA circuits through integrating an entropy-driven catalytic network, a catalytic hairpin assembly circuit, and a facile SNA assembly-based reporter system. This integrated system could implement ~100,000-fold signal amplification in the presence of 1 pM of input target. Possessing powerful amplification ability of nucleic acid signal, our strategy should be of great potential in fabricating more robust dynamic networks to be applied for signal transduction, DNA computing, and nucleic acid-based diagnostics.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (91427304, 21434007, 51573175), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (WK3450000002, WK2060200026, WK9110000005), the Financial Grant from the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2018M630708), and the National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents (BX20180285). This work was additionally supported by the Foundations of Educational Committee of Anhui Province (KJ2019A0719), the Excellent Talent Foundation of Education Department of Anhui Province (gxyq2019066), and the 136 Talent Plan of Hefei Normal University.

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  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Xiang Li, Dongbao Yao, Junxiang Zhou, Xiang Zhou, Xianbao Sun, Bing Wei, Chengxu Li & Haojun Liang

  2. School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hefei Normal University, Hefei, 230061, China

    Bin Zheng

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  1. Xiang Li
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  2. Dongbao Yao
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  3. Junxiang Zhou
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  4. Xiang Zhou
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  5. Xianbao Sun
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  6. Bing Wei
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  7. Chengxu Li
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  9. Haojun Liang
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Correspondence to Dongbao Yao or Haojun Liang.

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Li, X., Yao, D., Zhou, J. et al. Cascaded DNA circuits-programmed self-assembly of spherical nucleic acids for high signal amplification. Sci. China Chem. 63, 92–98 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-019-9603-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-019-9603-3

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