Universal and Programmable Rolling Circle Amplification-CRISPR/Cas12a-Mediated Immobilization-Free Electrochemical Biosensor

The development of a sensing platform with high sensitivity and specificity, especially programmability and universal applicability, for the detection of clinically relevant molecules is highly valuable for disease monitoring and confirmation but remains a challenge. Here, for the first time, we introduce the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas system into an immobilization-free electrochemical biosensing platform for sensitively and specifically detecting the disease-related nucleic acids and small molecules. In this strategy, a modular rolling circle amplification (RCA) is designed to transform and amplify the target recognition event into the universal trigger DNA strand that is used as the trigger to activate the deoxyribonuclease activity of CRISPR/Cas12a for further signal amplification. The cleavage of the target-activated blocker probe allows the methylene blue-labeled reporter probes to be captured by the reduced graphene oxide-modified electrode, leading to an obviously increased electrochemical signal. We only need to simply tune the sequence for target recognition in RCA components, and this strategy can be flexibly applied to the highly sensitive and specific detection of microRNAs, Parvovirus B19 DNA, and adenosine-5'-triphosphate and the calculated limit of detection is 0.83 aM, 0.52 aM, and 0.46 pM, respectively. In addition, we construct DNA logic circuits (YES, NOT, OR, AND) of DNA inputs to experimentally demonstrate the modularity and programmability of the stimuli-responsive RCA-CRISPR/Cas12a system. This work broadens the application of the CRISPR/Cas12a system to the immobilization-free electrochemical biosensing platform and provides a new thinking for developing a robust tool for clinical diagnosis.

Automated summary

The study introduced the CRISPR/Cas system into an electrochemical biosensing platform for sensitive and specific detection of disease-related molecules. By utilizing modular rolling circle amplification and CRISPR/Cas12a, signal amplification was achieved. The flexibility and programmability of this strategy allow for the detection of various targets.